


Tragedy Plus Time

by loveandallthat



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Character Death Fix, First Time, Fix-It, M/M, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-04
Updated: 2019-07-04
Packaged: 2020-06-03 22:09:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19473202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loveandallthat/pseuds/loveandallthat
Summary: Steve goes back in time to return the Stones and makes some dramatically different decisions. He comes back with some extra passengers, though the timing is a bit off. Just enough time to have been missed, then.The Stanner version of an Endgame fix-it that I asked for, and then wrote.





	Tragedy Plus Time

**Author's Note:**

> There are a lot of things I didn’t like about Endgame, but I wanted the challenge of leaving it all in there, and then changing things starting from as close to the end of Endgame as possible. Then I wanted to keep some of the themes even if I didn’t like them, like the weird comic relief character turn in Thor’s and Bruce’s stories. And then I wanted to fix all the deaths. And finally, I wanted to shove in my own personal favorite pairing, because there are plenty of fix-its, and this one is mine. That means this is a fundamentally selfish fic. I’m not trying to write the fix-it the makes the most sense; I’m trying to write the story I want, that makes at least some sense. But if your desires align with mine, I hope you enjoy!
> 
> No beta but please point out any grammatical, spelling, or factual errors you find. I won’t be offended.

Steve felt pretty guilty that Bruce was sending him back in time without knowing his plan, that Sam didn’t know either. And yet, he felt just as guilty that Bucky _did_ know. Of course, he hadn’t told anybody, but Bucky could read it in his face. Hopefully he was able to complete his plan and show up at the correct place at the correct time. Hopefully he could spend his whole life in hiding and not ruin his current timeline by existing in two places. A lot came down to hope, and his minimal understanding of time travel.

He had a sense of confidence, though, because they had agreed to his idea--he would go back before the time that they had gone back before and, depending on the situation, trying to get to each place a little early to scope out the best time to drop off the Stones. Having a plan was a comfort to him in this situation. It was Bruce’s fault that they had this guilt, though Steve completely agreed with it and didn’t want to ruin anything in any of the other timelines, respected the promise. 

The first step, the most important one for Bruce, was to return the Time Stone. 

“I was expecting someone greener,” the Ancient One said to Steve when he showed up there first. “But now that _you’re_ here, I think you should go visit Dr. Strange and return the Stone to him. He’s expecting you.”

“I thought that Bruce said that you’d be keeping it for him until it was the right time.”

The Ancient One smiled gently, her eyes bright with knowledge that Steve didn’t have. It grated on Steve in a way he didn’t want to admit, the way that someone could still be playful when something so serious was going on. Maybe to her it wasn’t as big of a deal? No, that didn’t make sense; she must have been worried that she wouldn’t be able to repair the timeline, like she had told Bruce. It was kind of the whole reason behind this excursion.

“I think that time has come. Could you deliver it for me?”

“Me delivering it won’t mess with the timelines?” He wasn’t necessarily trying to be sarcastic or snippy, but the sadness of leaving and the worry about what he was doing were really weighing on him. 

“Exactly,” she answered him, with the same expression on her face. Steve continued watching her for a minute, waiting for her to disagree or change her mind, before he gave in.

“Where do I need to go?”

\---

“Oh good,” Strange said when he arrived, “I’ve been waiting for you.”

“Of course you have,” Steve grumbled. If this was the trouble he had to deal with at the start of the journey, he imagined he’d end this with a pretty massive headache. 

“I think your friend Dr. Banner may have been misled, and I feel it’s important for me to correct any misinformation, so I requested that you come here instead.”

When could he have possibly made that request? Steve thought. What were he and the Ancient One doing, texting each other updates about the situation?

“So my mission is a waste of time?” he asked, trying to get to the point sooner rather than later, considering all the places he still had to stop.

“Not at all. Getting rid of the Stones in your timeline so that they can no longer be used in such a way is incredibly worth it, and this is a much better way to go about it than using them to destroy themselves, for example.”

Just how much does this man know? Steve wondered.

Strange kept talking. “However, there is the matter of the misinformation I mentioned. You _do_ cause a new offshoot of a timeline when you travel through time. Unfortunately, that isn’t the only way to cause a new parallel universe. Ours is a world with infinite parallel universes. The concept of this infinity is hard to grasp, even for me, but I’ll try to simplify it.”

Steve rolled his eyes, even if it was true that he was more of a soldier than a scientist. Strange probably wasn’t trying to be offensive, though Steve didn’t know him that well. Maybe he was.

“Infinite universes exist because every single tiny decision made by every single person in the world, no matter how powerful or seemingly powerless, is constantly creating a new parallel universe. That means, if we could line each universe up according to the same laws of linear time and compare them moment to moment, there would be two universes that for a split second would be the same except one different decision. Of course, from there, the changes would continue to separate the two universes. But those decisions happening every moment for every human in the world create an uncountable and unmanageable number of universes branching off.

“You may have noticed that the way that you time travel always brings you back to the same timeline. Depending on your goals, this could have been an incredible benefit or severe limitation to Hank Pym’s technology. When you go back, you are going back to your own timeline. But, as soon as you come into existence in the past, you are existing in an alternate reality where whatever you do will create alternate parallel universes where different things happen. Will create infinite universes, even. It’s a good thing you’re returning the Stones and I recommend it, for the sake of _your_ universe and as many other universes as you can help by returning this relative sense of normality to them. But you’re not saving the people you think you’re saving; you’re already in a different universe than them. The Ancient One you talked to is already a different person than the one Bruce promised to help.

“It’s good that you decided to come _before_ the moment when your comrades did, meaning that the non-time-traveling people that you’re dealing with in any given situation haven’t yet been affected by your time traveling actions--until the exact moment you arrive, that is. That means they’re still in your timeline at the split second when you arrive. They get further and further away every moment, because you changed their time. But they’re still close; they still start out as the people you know and love.”

That was a lot to take in for someone who hadn’t quite mastered the current advancements in STEM, but Steve turned it over in his head a few times, and a few things clicked.

“If that’s the case, how do I know I haven’t just ended up in a really similar reality with a difference I just haven’t noticed, one where the machine for time travel was also being used for the same purpose and is trying to bring me back the same way?”

Steve swore he saw a hint of amusement in Strange’s expression. “The only way is to trust the technology that’s keeping you in the same time zone every time. But, try not to think about that,” he added, patronizingly.

The list of things not to think about was getting a little too long, but Steve had experience in that department.

It took a bit more of forcing those things to the back of his mind and a switch back to his previous line of thinking before Steve managed to find the words for the next problem he was having with this. “But this is still important that I’m returning these, so that more realities have better results, right?”

“To put it simply, not necessarily. You can’t affect the portion of the infinity that has good or bad results. First of all, because both split scenarios are still infinite; infinity over two is still infinity. But also because more events will happen in those situations, and those will also have a fractional chance of a “good” outcome and a “bad” outcome, and maybe both fractions become the same number as the possibilities increase to infinity. Or maybe there are more chances of success when the current choice is what you see now as the wrong one.”

“But _you_ would know the answer to that, and the right choice to make in these situations.”

“I have a lot of knowledge, but I’m still human, and I can’t see possibilities down to this granular level. And I can’t tell you what choice I think you should make without dramatically altering the potential results of which I am aware. All I can do is give you this type of information and hope that you make the right decisions for you. And that you’re making the decisions for your reality, and not ruining any more, and that’s the best we can hope for.”

Something about that sat wrong with Steve, until it all came together. That meant… that meant that he could return the stone before Natasha died for it and create a universe with two stones and a universe with none. That meant that he could create a universe where Tony didn’t use the gauntlet. That was a little harder to sit with; what would happen in a world that was almost the same but where Tony didn’t save them? Would someone else do it?

He weighed it heavily in his mind, but he was so tired, and he’d made so many heavy decisions recently, and he was about to do something arguably incredibly selfish anyway if he stayed in the past. It was easy enough to switch it around to be something different and selfish, and yet, in many ways, selfless as well, at least that was the hope. That his new plan would make more people happy.

Strange gave him a long, searching look, making Steve feel like he was about to say something _else_ incredibly serious, but he didn’t. To Steve, it felt like he was having his mind read. But Strange just held out his hand for the Stone, and Steve handed it over. He turned around and waved awkwardly over his shoulder as he got ready to jump to the next time. 

With his new plan in mind, Steve went to 1970 again. That Tesseract theft had been a little easier without Loki involved, and besides, he could only return this one. But the main goal was that this way he could get extra Pym particles, if he was going to bring people back with him who would need them. Though, Natasha wouldn’t, would she? She was supposed to come back, ready to come back.

Somehow, it was always harder to return something after stealing it than to initially grab it, but luckily, the Pym particles were fully stocked. There was no reason that they shouldn’t be, but that was always worth worrying about. And Steve had practice breaking into here, even if he had to do it without help this time. 

Leaving Peggy alone again, though, that nearly killed him. He tried not to be obviously choked up; emotions in a SHIELD facility didn’t always fly, tended to attract attention. He thought about going back further, to when Peggy wouldn’t have a different husband yet, but that wasn’t the plan anymore, and maybe it never should have been. 

Luckily, returning Loki’s old choice of weapon was much easier than stealing it, and he didn’t have to do any Hydra hailing to make that happen; people were much less suspicious when things were going their way.

Steve was saving the riskiest for last, so he went to go drop off a stone into the pocket of a distracted Peter Quill next, and followed that by sneaking around Asgard. There wasn’t a lot of room in his brain for anything except the mission, time travel, and Natasha and Tony, but he tried to appreciate Thor’s old home just the same. Having parted with Tony on good terms had briefly been a great comfort to Steve, but as soon as he learned that there was a way to have more time with his friends, it felt like a taunt.

He focused on that instead of the amazing beauty of Asgard, all of the things that Thor had lost, and even Loki, lounging around not imagining the world in which he is killed by Thanos. Or maybe he was, if he’d already made a deal.

He sighed heavily when he got to Vormir. Clearly, he didn’t have anyone with him to sacrifice. But he just climbed to the top of the cliff and used Mjolnir to catch Natasha before she hit the ground.

This had been the main thing he wasn’t able to ask of Strange. Everything might be able to be well and good in his own timeline, when he messed with the past and created alternate universes, but this version of Clint would still think that Natasha had died, and maybe react in a similar way to the Clint of their timeline, barely holding it together for his family.

He threw the Stone at this Clint’s head and set Natasha’s watch for the same time as his, the final battle against Thanos.

Natasha had been fighting his grip nonstop, in a way that made Steve feel for Clint in a completely new way, imagining him fighting with everything he had to save his favorite person in the universe, and then losing, having to bottle it all up as much as possible and come back without her. All he knows about the situation is what he had heard from Clint, not a lot, and what he was looking at now. 

When they finally landed at the battle scene, around the corner from where Tony would soon be ready to rush Thanos and grab the Stones from him, Natasha turned on him.

“What the hell are you doing?” she asked, the rage and fear still lighting up her eyes. “Now nobody will have the Soul Stone and… where, when in the fuck are we?”

“The final battle, where Tony is about to die to save the world from Thanos’s army,” Steve explained. Natasha didn’t look at all happy about that, as expected, but she’d always been good at adapting to situations and quickly processing information. “I’ll explain later, but please trust that I’m doing this for a reason. I’m from even more in the future than this, when the battle is fully over. And I can go into my time, to a world where everything is fine, and bring you there, alive. Clint has the Stone. It should be fine.”

“ _Should_?” Natasha asked, eyes still narrowed.

Steve put his hands on her shoulders, hoping that he was just getting her attention, not seeming threatening. “I don’t know this stuff like Tony or Strange or Bruce! But yes, should. Just trust me. We have to get Tony, too, so he can also go to where I just was. When I just was. Whatever.”

“Fine,” Natasha said. “I’ll trust you, but only because it’s you. And you know that’s not something I would have done before.”

It was, Steve thought, but he didn’t call her on it. She searched his face for a few more moments, and then nodded. Then she stuck her head out from their hiding place, where she would be visible to Tony, and made a “come here” gesture.

“ _That’s_ your plan?” Steve whispered, incredulous. But Tony got a shocked look on his face, flew his somewhat injured body away from the wreckage and to the place they were hidden to investigate, alone, thankfully not drawing attention or dragging anyone else away from the fight.

“ _Nat_?” he asked, in almost the same tone of voice Steve had just used. “And Cap? I just saw you back there.”

“I know what you’re about to do,” Steve said, instead. “Come back to my future where the alternate version of you has already done it and been dead for a bit, and someone else will save things here. Or they won’t, just like in tons of other places. Infinite parallel universes, Tony.”

Tony, of course, got that way faster than Steve did. “There’s no proof that that’s the right time travel theory.”

“Strange said it was, and I’m choosing to believe it. Maybe I’m being selfish and terrible, and Bruce is right, and there will be a new timeline created where everything is messed up because of what I’ve done. But I’m taking that risk. Our tech always takes us back to the same universe. This one will become an alternate reality.”

He handed Tony a vial of Pym particles. “I’m assuming you’re either wearing your Avengers gear, or you incorporated this functionality into your suit when you had three spare minutes of boredom?”

Tony sighed. “I’m going to be really pissed if this causes some sort of time paradox or ruins our current reality.” But he was putting the vial into its compartment as he said it, and Steve was putting in the date that they needed to be back.

“I thought I’d noticed a strange disturbance in space-time,” a voice said smoothly, behind Steve, Tony, and Natasha, who’d all moved to face the battle.

They all turned around, which was probably not the best plan to put a battle at their backs. Loki was there, stolen Tesseract in hand, leaning against the rock formation. 

Tony glared at Steve. “I thought you said that you weren’t changing anything with your time fuckery!”

“This is your fault!” Steve hissed back. “Clearly that is 2012 original timeline Loki, who you helped escape, and turned into alternate Loki.”

Loki looked pretty confused, but seemed to catch on, since he knew he was traveling through the years anyway. 

“You only have a Space Stone, though,” Tony accused Loki. “Maybe I’d buy this if you could have combined it with the Time Stone.”

“Wormholes were the original time travel,” he answered, as if that made any sense.

“Then why is there a Time Stone?” Tony asked. “Not the point.” He turned to Natasha and Steve. “If we’re leaving, let’s go now, before I regret it.”

Their watches were set and, in the back of his mind, Steve wondered if maybe this universe’s final battle would be better or worse off with Loki there, considering how he had turned on Thanos in the past, but not in _his_ past. Who would he side with? The winner, if he could manage it.

This turned out to be moot when, as they were leaving, Loki managed to get to them in time, the Tesseract glowing as he reached out and got a hand on Natasha’s shoulder. She attempted to shake him off, but she was too late.

But it was too late, something strange was happening, and they were all traveling together forward in time.

  
  


Unfortunately, nobody was there when they showed up where they were supposed to be, though the machine was still there, still open and ready for their return. Maybe everyone had just stepped out for a second? Maybe Steve was off by a few hours and everyone left?

But Tony led them back to his house, opened the door with his handprint, then collapsed onto the couch.

“Should we really have let Loki in here?” Natasha asked. Steve had a firm grip on him, and Tony said something that must have been a code word, that opened a panel with some seriously high tech looking handcuffs and weaponry.

“This panel really is in case of emergency,” he insisted. “There are no kinky panels in the lakehouse.”

Natasha helped Steve get them onto Loki, trusting that Tony wouldn’t have opened it if they weren’t up to this challenge. As it turned out, they locked quite nicely into a spot on the wall.

“Your brain is a strange place,” Natasha said. Tony just shrugged. She looked at him for another moment, then did the same. “I’ll just get some water then, why don’t I?”

Then Tony thought to ask FRIDAY for the date and time.

“It’s been _two years_?” he yelled. Steve and Natasha flinched, just as much from the volume of his voice as from the actual fact that they hadn’t returned to when they were supposed to. “What the hell happened?”

Natasha looked suspiciously at the Tesseract, then back to Tony. “You understand how it works, sort of. Is there any way it could have been Loki?”

“Maybe,” Tony agreed, “But not on purpose. I don’t mean that based on the capabilities of the Stone, more about what that could possibly do to benefit his agenda. I think he just wanted to get out of there, to be honest.”

Loki said nothing, as expected.

“I’ll look into it. With Bruce, maybe, if that’s an option. How is he, how are Pepper and Morgan? FRIDAY?” he called.

The status update was that they were all fine and safe, though without any speculation as to their mental states after two years of thinking Natasha and Tony were dead, and that Steve was missing.

Steve removed a phone from somewhere in his suit and started sending a text, typing slowly. Tony looked at him, rolling his eyes. Then he passed out, and Steve had to abandon his text to once again catch Tony Stark after an exhausting ordeal.

Natasha and Steve discovered that they had more security clearance in this home than they would have anticipated, and that there was indeed a garage with a variety of vehicles, though the home looked a little unused. It felt too suddenly mundane to be just picking out a car and driving, loading Tony into a backseat and Loki into a trunk--not really good prisoner management technique, in terms of prisoners’ rights or the safety of their own plan.

  
FRIDAY was able to tell Steve and Nat that they had rebuilt the New Avengers facility in a new location, and even to take them there in one of the vehicles with more integrated tech. Someone must have been keeping things up to date even in Tony’s absence. The first step upon arriving at the New New Avengers facility was to get Tony into the medical area, and the second was to put Loki in the prisoner area, which of course they had. It felt wrong, though, that they had built up the facility exactly the same way, even if it had been relocated as an attempt at increased security.

The next step was Steve finishing his text to the rest of the Avengers, scattered around the galaxy, the universe. There was no telling how far away they would be, but this was important, because of who was back, and because of the mistakes Steve didn’t know if he’d made or not. He put it on red alert, which really just meant that it would make one noise and vibrate, a risk if anyone was currently trying to hide, but one he was willing to take.

What he didn’t expect was to hear a beep from a conference room, and to see a completely non-green, non-huge Bruce Banner walking into the main room.

“Oh my god, Steve!” he exclaimed, running over to give him a hug. “You’re back!”

“Bruce,” Steve said, “You’re… here?”

“Well, someone should be here at all times, just in case,” he deflected. It wasn’t necessarily true in Steve’s mind, but he wasn’t in charge anymore. Or was he? A lot must have happened in the two years since he left.

“I’d like to hear what you’ve been up to, but there are some things I should probably tell you about first, even if I’ll have to repeat them if anyone else shows up.”

“Hi, Bruce,” Natasha said, walking into the room.

“Like that,” Steve said, gesturing vaguely, watching Nat be the recipient of a tight hug that lifts her into the air.

“Wait,” Bruce said. “This is bad. The timeline--”

“Hopefully, I can explain that better once Strange is here. And, um, once Tony is awake. You should probably go check on him, actually.”

The look Bruce gave him was poorly contained anger, shock, and a tiny bit of hope, and Steve could swear his skin flashed green, but he just stormed off into the med area and didn’t look back. “Good to see you, Nat,” he said on his way out.

Steve put his head in his hands.

“It could have gone worse?” Natasha offered.

\---

After everything, after the losses and the decisions on the parts of many Avengers to go in different directions with their lives, there was a general sense of disbanding, but they still rebuilt a headquarters, just in case. And Bruce appreciated this, from time to time.

Bruce… didn’t want to make this terrible situation all about himself, but two of the members of the Avengers he was closest to were the ones who had died, and he was taking it pretty hard. Sure, Natasha was closer to Clint, and Bruce couldn’t put a claim on her just because they’d had a thing, but even still… they’d had a thing. It mattered. 

And Tony had been his closest friend, even if Tony was still closer to Rhodes. None of that was the point. Bruce may have been a lot of people’s second or lower choice, but some of the people he was closest to in the world had sacrificed themselves to save the world and he hadn’t. Couldn’t, even. His arm had even healed, compounding his survivor’s guilt exponentially.

For a while, he leaned into the Hollywood lifestyle--he was famous enough for it, at least. He ate a weird, fresh, farm to table, whole food diet, spent a lot of time at spas, and, most notably, attended several wellness and mindfulness retreats.

Ordinarily, Bruce Banner was the type to believe in science and keeping emotions out of it, but as the Hulk, he couldn’t ignore that forever. Surprisingly, especially to the science part of his brain, he was actually able to take some of what people were saying and look inside himself in a different way, until he finally achieved a new result, an ability to switch his body back to that of the original Bruce Banner, or to the Hulk, and to keep his mind during either.

That would show Valkyrie.

He wasn’t all better, though. Bruce was smart enough to know that what he was doing was unhealthy, when he went to the New New Avengers facility and found a conference room reminiscent of where he remembered brainstorming with Natasha and Tony, where they were on the table and he was on the floor. Sometimes he went back to the floor and imagined they were still there and it helped him think, helped him breathe.

The Avengers had stayed kind of disbanded, and Bruce wasn’t particularly inspired to go talk to anyone else or to go out and do anything that could be called a mission. He accepted a few dinner invitations to the Barton household. They’d never been the best of friends, but they got along all right, though they really didn’t talk much about anything serious. Didn’t and maybe couldn’t. What was the point?

With Steve having mysteriously vanished, Bruce had been trying to dig into the time travel stuff, but he was no Tony Stark, and Scott didn’t really understand it even on Bruce’s level, and Strange told him not to worry about it, which was not at all reassuring.

  
He missed Thor, too, though he understood that he had to do his own healing, in space.

If Natasha were here, she wouldn’t give up, Bruce thought, and spent a lot of time in that conference room, moving floating screens around for his own convenience when he got a little overwhelmed and had to lie back down.

Until the day he was doing just that when he got a text to assemble, and showed up much earlier than anyone probably expected.

\---

Caring for a passed out, should-be-dead Tony Stark was more than Bruce felt that he could handle at the moment, and yet his hands were doing it on auto-pilot. Tony was injured and dehydrated and had lost some blood, but relatively speaking--relative to when he was dead, anyway, he wasn’t in bad shape. Bruce was relieved and terrified and, as usual, angry. The Ancient One had convinced him to promise to keep the timelines safe, and Steve had just trampled all over all of it?

The most frustrating part of that was that he didn’t actually care. He was _so relieved_ to have Tony back. And his vitals were normal for his situation, and his arc reactor seemed unharmed, and Bruce was uniquely qualified to check that. When there was nothing left to fiddle with, he spun his phone around and around in his hand, trying to convince his fingers to text Pepper. He was more of a good guy than he was afraid of awkward situations, though, so he unlocked his phone and was composing the text at the time that Tony showed signs of waking up.

His grogginess cleared up quickly and gave way to pain, evident in his face.

Bruce tried to make his voice calming without patronizing. “Hey, Tony. It’s really good to see you. Everyone is safe; don’t worry.”

“Did you run out of the good drugs?” Tony asked, grimacing.

“I can give you more, if you want to rest.”

  
“I want to know what’s going on,” Tony said. That was expected; it was why Bruce hadn’t gone too heavy on painkillers or anything to make him drowsy. 

Bruce explained what he knew, mostly just that Steve, Natasha, Toni, and Loki somehow turned up at the New New Avengers compound, mostly things that Tony probably could have guessed except the new facility.

Tony coughed a few times. Then his face got gravely serious, and Bruce could tell he was about to get the real story. “I was about to use the Stones,” he started, as if this was a confession.

“I know,” Bruce said. “You did.”

“Oh, right, I’m alternate timeline me. Now that I think about it, maybe you’re the one who needs an explanation. Steve sort of told me what Strange tried to explain to him, but the crux of it was infinite parallel universes, and things can’t be unfucked. And Steve went back and stole Natasha and me before we died, so we’re not really ourselves.”

Bruce smiled a little at that. “You’re our timeline’s Tony. The Stones can only take us back to our own timeline, as we’ve seen. Maybe you’re a version who didn’t _die_ , but I can’t see that as a bad thing. Our world stays the same.”

“And the other timelines?”

“Hopefully in those timelines, Carol or Thor or I did that ridiculously stupid, brave, terrible, heroic thing that you did, and then didn’t die from it. Those worlds don’t have you anymore, but they also wouldn’t if you’d died.”

“I don’t like this,” Tony said.

“I don’t either. I was the one trying to keep the timeline clean. And I don’t like that you used the stones instead of giving them to someone who might have been able to handle it. I don’t like… that my arm healed from the same thing that killed you. But also… I have you and Nat back. I’m still selfish enough deep down to be really, really happy.”

“Sap,” Tony said. His expression was closed off until Bruce alluded to his guilt. “Speaking of tears, has anyone contacted Pepper? Is she OK? I can’t believe it’s been two years.”

“She’s fine. I was about to text her when you woke up, actually. I’m sure she’ll be happy to see you. And I’m not crying,” he added, though he wouldn’t be particularly embarrassed if he was.

“No, but your face is doing a frowny thing that it shouldn’t when you’re happy to see people come back from the dead.”

Bruce forced a smile. “Pepper’s fine. I’m sure she’ll be here as soon as she can.”

Tony studied his face, then sighed. “You’re hiding something, but promise me she’s fine and I’ll ask her myself when she gets here.”

“I promise. I’ll text her now.”

“It’s fine. She doesn't need to see me like this. Let her wait until things are settled, then we can figure out how to best inform her of this.”

Bruce knew that Pepper wouldn’t be happy with that, but he also knew that Tony knew that, and was making this decision anyway. It wasn’t Bruce’s place to meddle. 

They were quiet for a while, having the rest of their conversation with their silence, and then Bruce broke. “I implied this already, but you shouldn’t have sacrificed yourself. You should have just waited for me again. Or Carol, or Thor, even.”

“I’m not sorry,” Tony said quietly.

“I know.”

It was that moment that Steve and Natasha walked back in. Bruce hugged Natasha again, then Steve. Hugging was pretty big at some of the retreats he went to, and he felt ridiculous now, that he had even tried that in his depression; he could imagine how much these guys would make fun of him. They were already looking at him funny.

“I like hugs too,” Tony complained, and Bruce laughed, hugged him around the IV, which he probably didn’t need anymore. His breath got a little shaky, and he had to stand up and pull away.

“Why were you really here when we got here?” Tony asked again, and Bruce was about to tell them, to confess, but someone else arrived.

\---

Peter Parker, at 19, had been an adult for much longer than that. He’d also been dead for five years, and tried not to think about that, since half the population was having the same problem. That part of the problem, anyway. A lot of people also had the problem Peter had where he had witnessed and participated in a terrifying battle, although most of them weren’t his age. And many of them had lost people, just like him. 

But Peter had all of that, plus the knowledge, misguidedly told to him by Pepper, that it was Peter who inspired Tony’s desire to be a hero, to go back in time. She didn’t mention that it was him who convinced Tony to die for the world, but Peter still took that as fact. And the combination of all of those things was too much. 

He went through the motions, senior trips, applying to colleges, and hanging out with his friends. He got good grades, which he could have done with his eyes closed, and into every college he applied to. The Stark internship probably helped, but he also probably would have been fine without it.

After five years of the population being halved, Peter found out after he returned, resource allocation had been different, and there were a lot of fights when people came back, after the initial shock and relief wore off. Low resources made people desperate. The remaining and new Avengers and friends had their work cut out for them, but so did politicians and local police. Peter mostly interfered when it seemed like people whose job it already was weren’t doing well enough. That, and when he happened to see or hear about something, or when strange powers were involved...

He had friends, too. Ned stuck by him, as expected. MJ had as well. Peter wasn’t relieved that they had also disappeared; that wasn’t his style. He’d rather that hadn’t happened to anyone frankly. But it was still nice to have them around.

May clearly felt the same way, with how hard it was for Peter to get himself allowed out of her sight. He was glad that they were still able to talk, though. She picked up on the fact that he really wasn’t doing OK, and asked him about it. As much as Peter hated talking about it, there was something to be said for the fact that he could be honest about a small part of it, that he was sad--more than just sad--that Tony Stark had died, although to MJ he was only Peter’s boss. Likely his boss’s boss’s boss’s boss’s… etc, boss. But with the publicity that had surrounded that situation, how selfless and tragic and heroic his death was, Peter’s sadness was more easily understood. 

After two years, he was able to go a full month without crying so hard he couldn’t breathe, which was pretty good progress, if he did say so himself.

It doesn’t feel much better when he’s stuck at school with obnoxious kids whose names he knew but didn’t want to, since they couldn’t care less about his.

And yet he’s in this conversation circle for some reason, and he’s desperately seeking an exit strategy as they continue to drag up the battle with Thanos.

“Don’t you wish you’d been there??”

Yes and no, he thinks, but just listens to other people’s stories. He’s glad he was there to see Tony again, to help with the fight, but he’s not glad to have watched him die or been so terrified, again. But that’s probably not what the kid meant.

“And can you believe Tony Stark sacrificed himself for the world?”

“Yes,” he said, a little too emotionally to get away with in casual, non-involved conversation. Just then, his backup phone vibrated, and chirped once. The new Avengers communicators are small and convenient and nearly indestructible, even customized for the convenience of the owner. They could have integrated the tech into normal phones; anything made by Tony Stark would be just as solar powered and indestructible, and just as capable of communicating with others in space. But carrying his regular phone didn’t always work out well for Avengers work, so Peter had a backup that attaches conveniently to his new suit. Or fits in his pocket.

The point was for it to be stealthy, so it usually didn’t make noise unless it was a code red. Peter pulled it out immediately.

“Dude, why do you have two phones?”

Peter didn’t answer, staring at the message. “Avengers HQ. ASAP.”

From Captain America, who had been missing for two years.

\---

Peter arrived, in full Spiderman gear, to the New New Avengers HQ, to see _Captain America_ , _Black Widow,_ and Bruce Banner standing around a hospital bed which, as he approached, was revealed to contain _Tony Stark_.

“Mr. Stark?” he breathed, incredulous. He was shoving past terrifyingly strong, previously dead or missing people without realizing it, just to get to the bedside and, after not seeing any tubes connected, throwing his arms around Tony.

In the back of his mind, he was assuming that this was a dream, a hallucination, or worse, a trap. But it didn’t matter; he was going to enjoy it until he couldn’t anymore.

“Hey, kid. This is nice,” Tony said, though it sounded like he was in a lot of pain. It was also a terrible callback or joke, if that was the case. So terrible that it set Peter on another brief crying jag, into Tony’s shirt for a good few minutes, until he stood up sheepishly. Everyone else was still there.

He sniffed. “Sorry for the dramatics.”

“Are you kidding? You didn’t hear about the part where I screamed at Steve, handed him my arc reactor, and dramatically fainted into his arms?”

“We kept that part quiet until now,” Natasha said, smirking. 

“Oh, thanks. I can’t be held accountable for what I say, anyway. Painkillers, you know.”

“You _what_?” Peter asked, before he realized, belatedly, that sounded like a legitimate breakdown, and not a casual joke to be thrown into conversation. Peter wasn’t so sure it was funny yet, that enough time had passed.

“You got here fast,” Tony said. “First, in fact, not counting Bruce, who was mysteriously here when Steve, Natasha, and I arrived.”

Bruce shrugged sheepishly, and it wasn’t like Peter was going to call him on it. Not on that, anyway, since there was a more pressing issue.

“Hey, you’re not green and huge anymore!”

“I had also noticed that and neglected to ask about it,” Tony said, smirking.

“I, um. Got good at meditation,” Bruce brushed it off. “Hey, Tony, why don’t you explain our new understanding of time travel to Peter?”

“Good deflection,” Tony said, but he did, with holographic visual aids. Steve even looked like he understood better than he had when he’d been the one attempting to explain it to Tony from what he’d heard from Strange.

It was a while after that when Peter noticed. “Where’s Pepper?”

Bruce looked down. “We, um, didn’t call her.” He looked back up at Peter, hinting. Peter got it, obviously, but he didn’t think that was a good enough reason.

“I’m texting her now,” he said, and he did. Nobody tried to stop him, but it wasn’t like anyone but Bruce knew why they would.

\---

Clint Barton still had a lot of friends left who were likely to be part of a reformed SHIELD situation, which would more than likely have wanted him as a part of it, except that he wanted no part of it. Even less than Bruce did, since he still said yes every once in a while, whereas Clint was fully retired, enjoying time with his family.

Sometimes Bruce came around for dinner, and SHIELD members were allowed to visit as long as they didn’t talk about work or bring it with them, and that was the closest he came to a connection to his past life. Even still, he looked at Bruce and thought about Natasha, though he imagined the same thing was happening the other way around.

He was getting help, trying to keep himself from having such dark thoughts or reactions

And yet, when an Avengers message showed up, he found himself stepping into his boots without thinking about it, rushing out the door and yelling over his shoulder as he rushed out.

His legs gave out when he saw Natasha. It would have been embarrassing, and he was probably going to be teased for it in the future, but Natasha ran for him and dropped to her knees in front of him, to better allow her the opportunity to bury her face in his neck and cry openly. _She thinks she’s sad?_ he thought, a little bitterly. _She doesn’t even know what it means._

Eventually they were able to collect themselves, to stand up and return to the room that Natasha had come from, which turned out to be a medical area with Tony and Steve suddenly back, too. They explained how they got back and why they were so late and that, oh yeah, Loki was in this building with them at this very moment, unguarded but for a security camera and a cell.

It was overwhelming, to say the least, but they were all probably feeling it. He couldn’t help but notice that Bruce and Peter Parker had arrived earlier than he did, and also that Bruce wasn’t currently in Hulk form. He was curious about that, too, but he just kind of decided that it would get explained to him at some point, and he sat down in the main lounge area with Natasha to catch up. Sometimes it was better to wait for information than to ask outright.

“I’m sorry,” he said. He was: sorry that he hadn’t been able to out-maneuver her and be the one to die instead. And he probably didn’t need to clarify what he was apologizing for. 

“I’m sorry, too,” she answered, though she was sorry that she had forced him to watch her die. Though, he hadn’t. The time he needed to be Hawkeye and he looked away.

“Yeah, you should be,” he grumbled anyway. Natasha smiled, like that was just what she expected him to say, and then, reading Clint’s mind, went into an explanation of their current situation which was just as wild as the scenarios that led to it. She was so open now. Supposedly she’d been like this before, after everyone had been turned to dust, but Clint hadn’t seen it, only heard about it secondhand. And then what she was being open about was her despair, her desperation to keep everyone together. The absolute joy just behind her eyes was incredible, never before seen. It made him cry again, humiliatingly, but he wasn’t alone in that.

Clint had never been particularly married to the idea that they had to preserve the timeline, and honestly, if he’d had the chance, he would have tried to figure out a way to get to Natasha, anyway. He certainly fought hard enough in the moment. He didn’t really believe that Steve did it though, even subtly encouraged by Strange. Then again, he’d always been looser about rules than he seemed at first red, white, and blue glance.

And now he owed Steve everything he could possibly give, and maybe more, for doing what he couldn’t do. For allowing this moment, where Natasha explained to him the ridiculous, time-travel way that they had ended up in this situation, and then Clint started to fill her in on how his family was doing. Everything felt too good to be true. Including Tony and Steve having come back after being dead or missing respectively, but Clint was a little overwhelmed by Natasha’s return, too much to celebrate anyone else’s.

They stayed there for a long time, unconcerned with everything else that might be going on in that building, including the others who’d been returned, and their actual prisoner, someone who had caused him significant distress, once. Clint had mostly moved on from that, if only from going through worse things after it, having a family, having a very well vetted SHIELD approved therapist, and hearing from Thor how Loki had died.

It took them a lot of talking to come out of their little bubble, but eventually they were disturbed by Steve, Natasha, Bruce, and Peter leaving Tony’s room.

“He’s asleep,” Bruce explained. “Maybe you guys should try it,” he added, nodding at Steve and Natasha.

“More people will probably be arriving soon,” Natasha said. “I’ll just drink some coffee.”

“I’m good, but thanks,” Steve said, though his eyes were bright with amusement at Bruce’s concern.

“Oh hey,” Peter said, a few seconds before everyone else started to notice. “Someone else is here.”

\---

Space adventuring suited Thor, who had a great need to expand his mind and try new things. It had started on Earth, of course, but Thor had been so deep in Asgardian beliefs that it was taking a lot more than one planet to shake him out of it. Well, in ways that didn’t involve yelling at 12 year olds over comms, that was.

He even regretted it a little when he was called to Earth, but he’d been wanting to see Banner and company, anyway. 

“Sorry I can’t join you!” Quill was saying, as though he was invited, but Thor was just glad to have such a quick ride. His own arrival may have been a little louder than the other Avengers’ and Bruce went back into the medical room when Tony woke up.

When Thor arrived, he hugged the two newly returned Avengers unabashedly, and neither of them even fought it. “You have done it! You have completed your mission, and more,” he said to Steve. “Excellent work. I never understood why we couldn’t do this at the beginning. And good, Stark is here too.” He was walking over to the medical room.

“Yes, yes, I’m mysteriously and surprisingly alive,” Tony said, gesturing down his own body. Bruce was next to him rolling his eyes, and stepping to the side to not get in the path of Thor’s decision to hug everyone, except it turned out he was next, right after Tony.

“Wow, you are muscular,” Peter said, when it was his turn. He stepped away and close to Tony’s right side after Thor released him, though.

“Thank you, I have found myself in a surprising number of situations requiring heavy lifting while traveling with the Guardians. They send their regards; however they were unable to stop their journey seeking their other comrade.”

Everyone else looked at each other, trying to communicate with raised eyebrows that one of them should probably mention Loki at some point.

Natasha sighed heavily. “You might notice that we’re two years late. And that we still have a Tesseract. It turns out that it threw off our trajectory that someone else was trying to use it at the time that we were trying to get back to the time that Steve was supposed to return.

“The person who was using it tracked us by our time disturbances, from 2012 to 2023, when Steve and I were there to take back Tony.”

“Alternate timeline Tony,” Tony said.

“That’s an unnecessary technicality,” Bruce said, rolling his eyes. “You’re just our timeline Tony a few minutes before dying.”

“Anyway,” Natasha continued, “As I’m sure that you have guessed, the person who stole a Tesseract and messed up our plan was indeed Loki from 2012, after the battle and before all the other things that you told us about. So, he’s in the basement--” Thor was gone as soon as she gave away his location. “I figured he’d leave,” she said to Peter, who was next to her.

“Someone should probably make sure he doesn’t release him immediately,” Bruce said, rolling his eyes and following. “I get that Loki eventually died on the right side, but this Loki hasn’t been through the same things.”

Clint and Natasha acquiesced and followed, in no rush.

“Let’s just stay here, why don’t we?” Tony said. “Neither of us really need to talk to that version of Loki.” If anyone had been around besides Peter, Tony knew someone would be making fun of him for not immediately wanting to poke this situation to see what he could make happen. He did want to, but he didn’t want to see what kinds of things Loki might say around Peter.

“I need to eat something,” Steve said, walking for the kitchen, since everyone else was splitting up already. He was starving. “I don’t know what we have here but I can get you something, if you want.”

“I’m good for now, thanks,” Tony said, trying to be nicer but awkward at it, remembering that he was, A. no longer mad at Steve and B. recently saved by him.

Downstairs, Thor had reached Loki’s cell, and was moving to unlock it.

“No, no, remember this is 2012 Loki, please just leave him there a bit,” Bruce said, arriving on Thor’s heels. “You can talk to him alone if you keep him in the cell.”

“We didn’t agree to that,” Clint said, then sighed. “But fine, we’ll just be right outside. Not listening! Unless you’re yelling.”

The truth is, it just gives Clint and Natasha a chance to keep talking, more than anything else. But also, Clint still wants to make sure his rightful mistrust of Loki is completely known. They assumed that Bruce would just go join Tony and Peter, though he didn’t, walked off alone.

“Brother,” Thor said, unable to keep the joy out of his voice despite having calmed down a lot over the last couple of years--in good, self aware and bad, avoiding ways. But being with the Guardians had really cheered him up in a surprising way, surrounded by ridiculous antics and unexpected adventures, a change.

He wasn’t healed from what had happened, but it was something.

“Nice hair,” Loki said. “Let me out.”

Thor’s smile got bigger at that. He vaguely understood that this version of Loki hadn’t been through what they had together, and it made him incredibly sad, but that version of Loki was in there somewhere. “I’m actually going to try listening to my friends this time, and maybe I’ll let you out if they decide you can leave.

Loki studied him. “But you want to. I can tell. As far as my current memory extends, there’s no reason why you would want to do that, so a lot must have happened.”

Thor pulled up a chair. “I can tell you about it, if you want.”

“Even if I hear about it, I won’t be the person who lived it. But I wonder…” Loki stuck out his hand, like Thor waiting for Mjolnir. Nothing happened for a while, which Thor empathized with, and then a blue light collided with his hand and seemed to go into him, lighting him up for a moment before disappearing.

“How can you do whatever that was, but you can’t get out of the cell?” Thor asked. He wanted to know what that bit of magic was, sure, but he was a little more concerned about the possibility of Loki getting to anyone else in the building, even though he was pretty confident in himself and his abilities to stop that from happening. He braced for a fight, just in case.

“Oh, I can,” Loki said, and walked through to stand at Thor’s side, making him turn around to face him. “It just seemed like something interesting was going on, and this would be the best way to get information.”

“Well that’s just great, isn’t it.” Thor sighed, resigned. “Then, what was the light show.” He wasn’t even enthusiastic in his question.

Loki leaned against the bars, and Thor noticed for the first time that he looked pretty tired. “It looks like the later version of myself left me my memories.”

Thor grabbed his shoulders to keep his attention. “So you remember--”

“Everything, yes,” Loki said. “Or at least I think it’s everything, because the last thing I remember seemed like I was pretty likely to die at the hands of Thanos. But I still managed to hide my memories just in case.”

“You can just… remember this now?” Thor asked, impressed. And a little suspicious. “You had that ability ready to go in case you died?”

“It doesn’t feel exactly like I lived it, but it doesn’t feel like I didn’t, either. And I really hoped I would never have to use this; I almost can’t believe I did.” The tiredness, or the strength of the memories, meant that Loki was more honest and less prone to his tricks. Or at least, Thor hoped that’s what it meant. It could have still been a very good con.

It wasn’t the most accurate of tests, but Thor threw his arms around Loki, suddenly. Loki pushed him off, more than just a token protest, but when Thor was too strong for that initial attempt, gave in and waited. That was probably the most convincing response Thor could imagine--almost to the extent that it was likely he was using that as a trick, too. Loki probably knew that going too willingly or fighting too hard would make Thor suspicious. Except that then his arms came up too, and he hugged back. There was no way that he was faking, Thor decided, as he did every other time that Loki was lying.

“I died for you,” Loki said, when they pulled away.

“Well, I mean, that’s not exactly true--”

“I died for you,” Loki repeated. “You owe me.”

Thor gave up. “Fine, sure, you died for me. What do you want?”

“I’ll let you know.”

\---

Bucky arrived while Steve was eating, and managed to get all the way into the kitchen without being intercepted. Hopefully that was his clearance instead of bad security. He reached over and grabbed half of Steve’s sandwich, taking a bite to say, with his mouth full, “I thought you’d be gone longer.”

Steve turned around quickly, to throw his arms around Bucky, though they both had to wait to chew their own food before they could talk, making the reunion feel more ridiculous than emotional.

“You were supposed to think that I was only going to be gone for five seconds,” Steve pointed out.

“I had some suspicions,” Bucky replied.

“I was tempted,” Steve admitted. “I truly don’t know if I would have gone through with it if things had gone differently. But then I got to talk to Strange, and my whole plan changed.”

“Tell me about it?”

\---

“God damn it, Thor,” Clint said, “Pun intended.” He and Natasha had noticed that it was suspiciously quiet downstairs, and had run down the stairs to see that Loki and Thor were both gone, though the cell doors were closed. He pulled out his phone and texted him. “Is it even worth going after him?” he asked Natasha, while typing.

“Probably not,” she confirmed. “Do we trust him?”

“With our lives? Yes. With his brother? Hell no. Come on, let’s just go upstairs.”

They get to the main room to see Peter and Tony watching TV, and Clint immediately sits down on Peter’s other side. “Where’s everyone else?”

“Barnes just showed up to sneak up on Cap in the kitchen,” Tony explained, not looking away from the screen. “I haven’t seen Bruce in a while, though, good point.” He looks over at Natasha and stands up. “Look for him with me?”

She smiled. “Of course.”

They both knew where they were going, even though this was technically a new building. They got to a conference room that had nothing special about it, not really. It didn’t have the magic of the old one, and that one had nothing but memories, anyway. But sure enough, Bruce was flat on the floor, like there weren’t perfectly good chairs in this room.

  
Grunting a little at the exertion, Tony pulled himself to lay across the conference table as he watched Natasha do the same thing on the other side, oriented the other way. 

“Hi Tony, Nat,” Bruce said. His eyes were closed.

“Were you hoping we’d show up?” Tony asked.

“Yes,” Bruce answered him, too honestly. “For two years, I was hoping you’d show up here.”

“Sorry we’re late,” Natasha said. “Were you hoping to have a strategy meeting?”

“I’d settle for an extensive debriefing at this point.”

Tony laughed, coughing a little. “I think you may have more to tell us than we have to tell you, considering the last time we saw you, you were stuck as hybrid Hulk and, oh yeah, we’ve missed two years of your life. Your lives.”

“I suppose that’s fair,” Bruce said. “Plus, I’m sure you’ll find it hilarious. After I spent about a month in a relative depression about you two jerks, and the fight. And initially it was hard to have lost the use of my arm and then--” he so, so desperately wanted to look Tony in the eye, and he was so glad that he wasn’t, “And then I hated it just as much when I realized my arm was healing. The stones _killed_ you, and I realized that I was going to be fine.”

“I’m back for good,” Tony promised, as if he could do that; the words sounded forced out of him. 

“Alternate universe you,” Bruce spat back, mockingly.

Tony sighed. “Our time travel can only go back to our timeline. At the moment before Steve came to get me I was this timeline’s Tony Stark, five minutes away from killing myself. I remember everything except that. I even remember knowing that I would do it. I was joking about being an alternate me, because it’s hilarious, but also because I’m afraid of the same thing as you are, even though I know logically I’m me. _Your_ me.”

Of course Tony Stark was making jokes because he was terrified. And it flipped something in Bruce’s head, hearing the fear and argument from someone else made him realize that it was wrong. This was their timeline Tony Stark, the way that their time travel worked, he had to be.

“And I’m yours, as well,” Natasha said. Bruce could hear a smile in her voice, a tease at the phrasing, and how far she’d come from when she was hiding her whole self hit him full force.

Bruce loved both of them, so much it hurt.

“You’re right; I know it. And I’m so glad you’re both back. It just feels too good to be true and I keep wanting to prove that to be the case.”

“I’m sure we can tease you about your life enough to make you wish that we weren’t back,” Tony said. “There wasn’t even time for me to make fun of you being a ridiculous pseudo-celebrity, friendly neighborhood Hulk.”

“If you want to make fun of me… I’ll give you all the ammo you need. I leaned _more_ into my fame, if you could believe that. Started going to fancy meditation and wellness retreats, drinking kale shakes and eating weird fake meat. Which, I already have to eat a lot of calories, but getting enough food at these low calorie places is almost impossible. But it is where I picked up the meditation techniques that allowed me to turn back and forth, and to keep my head as the Hulk. Honestly I think they were 85% bullshit, but I did so many of them that I was able to gather together some ideas that were actually good.”

Tony had been listening quietly the whole time, until Bruce got to the end and he cracked up. “I can’t believe I held out through kale shakes, but the idea of you actually learning something from those rich people places is too much. If I’d known they’d help you that much, I could have bought your way into one of them at any time, you know. The solution to your identity problems was hiding in plain sight the whole time!”

In response, well, Bruce was mostly just crying a little. “So good to have you back,” he managed to repeat, choking on a laugh.

“Honestly,” Natasha said, sounding like she was handling this conversation approximately as well as Bruce was, “I should have known this was exactly where you were going to end up. In retrospect it’s a perfect fit.”

“Hey, hey, I didn’t ‘end up’ there; I just took some ideas from those places and never went back. I came back and helped New SHIELD--New New SHIELD?-- whenever they really needed the other guy, and other than that, just tried to live with myself.”

That was a more dramatic phrasing than he had intended, although it was true; that had been the hard part. Living with himself, with his past, and his ghosts and his decisions. And now learning that the timeline is different than he thought, wondering if they would have done anything differently initially.

“The fact that you didn’t die isn’t a betrayal, Bruce. I’m sure you know about survivor’s guilt.” Natasha’s voice was kind. “I feel it too, though. I was going to die; some version of me _did_ die, and I’m still here? It feels wrong.”

Bruce knew that was wrong. Because Natasha took the opportunity when she had it. Bruce knew that he could have survived another snap and he wasn’t there when he needed it. He could have survived the fall that Natasha had, too, though he admitted that may not have been enough to “earn” the Soul Stone. He still thought that they should have learned about that in advance, and figured out a way around it, other than human sacrifice.

“If I can’t have survivor's guilt, you _definitely_ can’t,” he replied.

Tony took a deep breath before he spoke. “Bringing me back creates infinite universes where I didn’t use the Stones and someone else had to do it. In many of those, it might have been someone else who couldn’t handle it, and I wasn’t even there to help with the aftermath because I disappeared.”

“There were already infinite universes where you didn’t use the Stones,” Bruce argued, sitting up. “You’re clearly misrepresenting the concept of infinite universes.”

He could see Tony’s shoulders move as he shrugged. “We could still be wrong about it. We already were once. Or, we think we were.” Bruce made a noise, about to argue. “I know. We may never know; there’s no point dwelling on it. But we’re all going to.”

Natasha and Bruce voiced their agreement, but they didn’t want to keep talking about it.

  
  
  
  
  


“It’s getting a little loud out there,” Natasha noticed. “No, stay,” she added, when it looked like Bruce and Tony were both going to follow her, Tony sitting up and Bruce already on his feet. She walked over to kiss him on the cheek, though, and Bruce closed his eyes to live in that moment, and didn’t open them until she walked away.

“No, no, get up here, you idiot,” Tony said, when Bruce looked like he might sit back down. So he awkwardly took Natasha’s vacated tabletop spot. “This is your fault anyway; this place is full of perfectly good normal places to sit, if I remember correctly, but you’re just stuck here in a time where it was normal to lie around on tables because we were too tired to sit properly.”

“I think we were just going out of our minds,” Bruce replied, because he was getting onto the table anyway. “Like now.” He turned on his side, and just stared at Tony, his friend, whom he’d missed for two long years.

Tony let him, for a minute. He even looked back for a while, before he cleared his throat. “Now that we’re alone though, how do we really feel about that time travel loophole?”

“Great,” Bruce replied. “I feel great about it, now, when you two are back. But we could still model it out.”

“Thanks for keeping all my stuff running while I was gone, by the way,” Tony said. “That probably helped us even find this place in the first place. And yes, of course we’re going to model it out.”

Despite the fact that Tony had just been through a terrible battle, or maybe because of it, he was ready. The tech had some minor improvements, too. Small fixes that Tony might have gotten around to fixing, anyway. But they were barely changed, like they were waiting for him.

\---

Natasha came to sit on the other side of Peter, thus surrounding him with some of SHIELD’s best agents and previously scariest people, though now maybe less so.

“What are we watching?” she asked.

“Old The Good Place reruns,” Peter said.

“I have no idea what that is.”

“Me either,” Clint said, “but it’s not bad so far. It’s been lighthearted until it suddenly isn’t.”

“Great. Perfect. Reminds me of you,” Natasha said.

Clint snorted, a little surprised. “Jokes about my bad reaction to trauma, great, cool.”

Natasha laughed at him, and then held her stomach a little with a hiss.

“You’re kidding me,” Clint said. “Steve got the version of you _after_ I kicked you in the ribs?”

“Does that mean that I’m allowed to make fun of your trauma?” Natasha asked, still with a slight grimace.

Peter was sitting in the middle of them, looking like he was trying to conceal a huge smile and only partially succeeding. “I thought you guys were supposed to be terrifying assassin spies, but you’re just sitting here teasing each other over me like I’m not even here, although of course since now I’m talking you clearly know that I’m here so that isn’t the case anymore.”

“We know you’re here,” Natasha said, after waiting until he had fully finished, instead of interrupting. “We’re glad you’re here.”

“We’d be glad to tease you, too,” Clint added. “Your taste in shows, your spider themed suit, the fact that you’re just a small child…”

“I’m 19. What were you guys doing at 19?”  


Natasha and Clint looked at each other over Peter, before Natasha answered. “You know, neither of us really need to think about that. We’d be lucky to be able to do some of what you’ve done at your age, but I don’t think that we were as good as you are, back then. I don’t even know if we are now.”

“Oh, wow. And now you’re saying really nice things about me. I don’t know what to do about that! Oh, and now Captain America is here! And his friend whose name I don’t remember. I should really learn that, sorry! Oh, and sorry Mr. Rogers, about the thing where I was helping Mr. Stark fight against you, but you have to understand, I really care about him.”

“You can call me Bucky,” Bucky said, picking out the relevant part.

“And I forgive you. And you can call me Steve.”

“I couldn’t--”

“It’s an order.” But Steve was smiling.

“I mean, I’ll try, but mostly because you seem so serious about it, and not because of you saying that, since you don’t have any actual authority over me. And after being missing for two years do you have authority over anyone? Oh, no, I’m not trying to challenge you, Mr. Rogers. I mean Steve.”

Bucky just laughed.

“Please call me Natasha. Even Nat if you’re feeling friendly.”

“Clint.”

“Bruce.”

“Mr. Stark.” Natasha looked up at the new arrivals, who had brought with them the results of their analysis to work on among everyone else. She gave Tony her best eye roll. “OK, fine, Tony. But you’d better still respect me in the morning.”

There was a mixed response of rolled eyes or snorted laughter.

“So, how’d you get here, Barnes?” Tony asked, sounding a little confrontational. 

“I was in Wakanda,” he answered, like he hadn’t noticed any hostility. “They got me here pretty quickly, although they’re still busy dealing with the fallout, like everyone else. Although, you might have been able to get T’Challa here if you’d told him what was going on, to be honest. He’s busy, but I think he may have been anxious to leave.”

“Yeah, this is the place to be,” Tony agreed. Something in his strained tone told Peter that this was Tony Stark making an effort.

“Nowhere I’d rather be,” Natasha said, pretty well settled into the couch at this point.

“I mean, considering the alternative…” Clint joked.

“Oh, cool, you guys are already at the joking stage,” Tony said. “I can’t wait to get there, considering I’m barely at the talking to people normally stage. Barely at the not yelling at people stage.”

Peter stood up and walked over to Tony, hugged him again. “Aw, come on, kid, is this a ‘shut up’ hug? Is that really a thing that’s happening?”

He shrugged in response; Tony felt it. And he shut up.

“I couldn’t just not take you,” Steve said. “I know how it feels to have been willing to die for something and then not had to, and I know what it’s like to come back to two years gone, or way more. And Peter knows for five years--well I probably shouldn’t remind you about that. The point is, be at whatever stage you want as long as it’s not the passing me your reactor stage.”

Tony showed no notable signs of removing himself from the hug he was still involved in. “Counseling really changed you. Also, Nat said we weren’t mentioning that.”

Steve looked wrecked, though. “I’m sorry, Tony.”

“Me too, for what it’s worth,” Bucky said. He wondered who actually knew what he was apologizing for, but it didn’t matter; he couldn’t keep it in anymore.

“No, no, this is a second life, a good time to forgive people and move on. That’s the thing to do, isn’t it? Bruce has learned a lot of new age stuff; he’ll help me.”

Bruce has to pause again, to run his hands over his face. Tony was exhausting, not that he’d want him any different--except happier. “I know you don’t want to do anything new age, but yes, let’s keep working together.”

“See?”

Peter finally let go. “Me too, Mr. St--Tony.”

Tony huffed. “Great, yes, I get it, surrounded by great people, shouldn’t complain.”

“Speaking of,” Natasha started.  


Tony waved his hand dismissively. “Yes, of course, you’re also great.”

“Thanks, but I meant, look at the video feed from the front door.”

Pepper had arrived.

\---

Tony managed to drag her into a quiet room where they could be alone before she tackled him in a hug, so immediately trusting that it was truly him who had returned. Tony waited out the tears, both hers and his, before he even entertained the idea of sitting down on the bench to discuss what had actually happened to lead them to this point.

“You believe it’s me, then?” Tony asked. 

Even without him asking, she knew what was wrong. She knew what he really meant. “Of course you’re really you even if you missed out on the worst part of your life,” she whispered.

That sat wrong with Tony. “Saving the world would not have been the worst part of my life.”

“Dying would have been,” Pepper insisted, forcefully, unapologetically. “You can be as mad as you want about the fact that you came back, about having to deal with your unfinished business, but it is a good thing that you are back.”

“Oh, I’ve been mad at people.” But Pepper’s permission, her prediction of his behavior, made him smile a little.

“Yell at Steve and Bucky for hours if you need to,” Pepper agreed. “Probably not at Peter or Bruce, or Natasha. Clint, maybe a little, and definitely Thor and Loki. Me, if you need to.”

“I’m not bad at Steve or Bucky anymore; they’re just… convenient targets. Targets of habit. Thor and Loki, though, bring them around here, please. As for you… shouldn’t you be the one who’s mad at me? You thought I’d given all of this up and I went and died on you doing it.”

“Tony, I love you. The real you, the you who is always going to help out when you’re needed, always going to risk yourself or die for people. To be so brave and strong, and vulnerable, and amazing. And I love all of that about you, and I knew that you would do this if it came down to it, and I told you to go anyway, OK?”

Tony reached for her, pulled her in for another hug because he absolutely couldn’t help it. Pepper leaned into it, but she pulled away too quickly for Tony’s tastes.

“I love that about you, but at the same time, I’ve spent two years mourning you because of it and I can’t do it anymore. My story during these two years is hard.”

This brought something to the forefront of Tony’s mind. “A few people felt awkward when your name was mentioned.”

“Oh, that.” Pepper smiled, obviously forced. “After you… died… I ran myself into the ground working too hard to try to keep the company up and running while raising our daughter. I know that you didn’t need me to, or ask me to, but I really wanted to do right by the man who’d done right by the whole world.” 

“Pep--”

“I collapsed from overwork, tiredness, not eating. This wasn’t your fault, obviously. You never asked me for this. But it’s still what I did, and I don’t think that I can be with you when you do this kind of thing again. Tony, I will love you forever, but I can’t do this anymore.”

Tony hadn’t actually done this for Pepper exclusively, even for just Pepper and Morgan and Peter. He didn’t do this for any specific people, though there were faces that flashed in his mind before he snapped his fingers, Pepper’s, Morgan’s, his father’s, his team, those who’d lived with him and those who died.

He thought that they needed life more than they needed him. Technically it was true, but there was a chance that they would still be OK if Tony hadn’t done what he’d done in that exact moment. They had a chance at someone else coming along, someone capable of withstanding the Stones. The problem was, that Tony knew if he did it, it was a sure thing, everyone would live. There was no way to argue with that.

Having done it, and yet, not having done it, was a difficult feeling warring inside Tony, and it wasn’t necessary for him to put that on Pepper. And he definitely wasn’t going to beg her to stay with him through this. But he didn’t believe that she was right that he couldn’t change, couldn’t avoid doing this next time. He didn’t believe he had it in him to break this promise twice.

“If I promised not to go back to this life? No more Iron Man for good this time?” Tony asked.

Pepper was shaking her head. “I also can’t be the one to ask you to do that. Clearly. Since last time, I didn’t ask you not to do that. Even then, I knew you had to.”

There were dozens of previous times when Tony thought that he couldn’t love Pepper any more, when they’d gotten together, when she’d gotten into a suit, when she married him, when she was pregnant, giving birth, raising their daughter with him. But this was almost too much to bear, the way that she could love him and support him through everything, and know him so well. Even if she was breaking his heart, he’d never loved her more.

“I support your right to make this decision but I’m going to need to try to argue just a few more times,” Tony said, voice strained.

Pepper sobbed. “Please don’t. I can’t take it, and I’ll say yes and I shouldn’t.”

Tony took a deep breath, shuddering. “OK. I won’t. But… I love you. And I need to be able to see Morgan whenever I want.”

“I would never keep you from her for a second,” Pepper promised, seriously. “Except now, when I thought this might be a little overwhelming. We can live next door to each other like the unhealthy exes we’ll be for the rest of our lives.”

Tony smiled, a little. “Great. Perfect.”

They stayed there, leaning against each other for a long while after that, until they couldn’t justify it anymore. Nobody came to get them.

\---

Steve and Bucky gone when they got back; Sam had arrived, and Steve jumped at the chance to explain to him off in a different room, and he dragged Bucky with. The whole situation had the atmosphere of a weird open door housewarming party, or, more accurately, people dropping by after a funeral. 

Which was further exemplified when Scott showed up. There was an argument in their eyes, a silent communication, like nobody wanted to be the one to explain to him what had happened. Natasha was about to do it, until they were disturbed by an opening portal and Strange coming out of it.

“Rogers isn’t here? No matter, he’s not really the one who needs to hear this. You three.” He indicated Bruce, Scott, and Tony. “Don’t help anyone time travel again. This timeline can’t take many more disturbances, and we can’t just use and abuse time travel every time we have a problem. I may not have discouraged the rescue mission, but that is the last time I will tacitly support this. If you try to do anything, I will know, and I will stop you.

“Besides, as I’ve said, your current time travel allows you to travel back in _your own timeline_ , which means the people who have been brought back are ‘your’ versions of them. Try not to have a series of identity crises over it. However, if you go back and change the timeline, the people you’re with will get further and further from your versions of them. Not that it matters--I will stop you.”

“You realize we still have an additional Loki and Tesseract in this universe, if we can’t go back in time and drop them off?”

“Sometimes, you have to take the good with the bad.”

On that note, he left as quickly as he’d come.

“Steve doesn’t even get this lecture? Unfair. He’s the one who actually did the things.” Tony said. “Hopefully none of you are going to start in on me.”

Pepper was still by his side, but she shook her head, hoping nobody thought that meant she’d lectured him. 

“I wouldn’t mind a lecture, if it would tell me what was going on,” Scott offered.

“How interesting, I feel the same way,” said Nick Fury.

\---

Natasha explained, helped by Steve, and Tony and Bruce jumped in reluctantly to make sure the new time travel theory was right. Natasha explained that they wouldn’t be able to do it anymore, at least according to Strange. 

“Should we start time traveling just to see if he notices?” Tony joked.

Scott got a text. “Strange says no.”

“Wow,” Bruce said. “Do you think sending that was a total guess that paid off?” Tony snickered.

Fury looked like he may have even been amused or pleased by the whole situation. “I don’t know how to feel about this timeline situation, but I can’t help but be glad you all are back. Even though it’s going to be hell to address this publicly after doing so many tributes to you. The story currently is that Captain America was just ‘away,’ but Stark is obviously very well known, and we’ve done tributes to his and Natasha’s heroism.”

“I’m touched,” Tony jumped in.

“They were indeed very touching,” Fury confirmed. “And now, because of that, we’re going to have to come out and announce that you were both in critical condition, and we kept you at a SHIELD facility for two years, and released you both at the same time.” It was clear in his tone how ridiculous he knew the world would find this announcement.

Natasha cleared her throat. “Assuming that Tony goes right back into the public eye, I could lay low for a while, and the timing issue won’t be there. People usually don’t notice me, anyway.”

“That means you’ll get more sympathy when you get back, since you were away longer,” Tony complained. Everyone rolled their eyes. “I’m joking! Fine, we’ll go with your cover story.”

“You understand why we can’t have the rest of the world knowing about time travel. There may be other people with almost Stark or Banner level intelligence out there who would be inspired to try this and mess it up if they knew that it was possible. And Strange can’t live the rest of his life stopping everyone who tries this.”

“Not likely re: geniuses like us. Other than that, cool. Press conference?” Tony suggested.

“Let’s give it a few days. Get some rest, see some friends, family. We’ll be in touch.”

That’s what they did. Tony remembered to contact Harley Keener in the car on his way back home with Pepper to see Morgan, and apparently sleep in separate beds, not that he was thinking about it. Bruce had his own modest place in the area, though he was reluctant to leave his team. Natasha went home with Clint to his family; Scott had a family to go back to as well, and Peter was going back to Aunt May. Bucky decided not to catch a ride back to Wakanda quite yet, to stick around with Steve. Fury had offered to find them places to stay, but they were going back with Sam. 

“We’ll regroup tomorrow,” Steve said.

\---

Tony found a place that wasn’t right next door to Pepper’s, but about a ten minute drive. It was incredibly nice, though he would have to renovate it to make it fit his needs, and he’d have to stay somewhere else in the interim. However, let it not be said that Tony had no emotional intelligence; he understood that this would be the worst time to live with Pepper, when she was feeling this way.

And he wasn’t going to pressure her. He loved her more than anything, except Morgan. But she was right. No matter how much he loved them, she was right. If the world got into another situation like this, and Tony had the same opportunity, he would still take it. He knew that he did, sort of, and that therefore he would have used the Stones at the cost of his own life, but he also knew that he would sacrifice himself to save the world again and again and again until it took. He hoped beyond hope that nothing this ridiculous would ever happen again, but he couldn’t promise to Pepper that if it happened he wouldn’t do anything. In fact, he was pretty sure that if it happened again, he’d do it.

The last time they had met up for lunch, Bruce had said that Tony could stay with him, though he understood that his place didn’t live up to Tony’s living preferences. Tony had pointed out that he’d spent some time in some rough places, and that all he really needed to do was outfit it with enough technology to keep up with any projects or boredom he might decide to entertain. He also pointed out that the real point was to be not _sleeping_ at Pepper’s house, and that he might be there most of the time anyway, trying to spend as much time as possible with Morgan.

He also confessed, quietly, in a voice that meant that Bruce really had to lean in, that he didn’t want to miss the nights, either, didn’t want to only be there half the time or less, to not be able to tuck her in or comfort her if she had a nightmare (and who wouldn’t have nightmares, after what had happened). He already missed two whole, amazing years, and Morgan showed signs of trouble with abandonment, and he would never dream of doing anything to hurt Pepper. But with the situation they were in, the separation, there would never be a good solution. 

And then one night, late because Tony had stayed long enough at Pepper’s to tuck Morgan in, he confessed to Bruce that his biggest fear was that he would have to fight Pepper for increased time, and he didn’t want to, because he was just as afraid of winning as he was losing. 

Bruce paused to think about it, feeling like Tony was hinting at something. “You’re going to have to build another ridiculously large building, that you both could live in, separate enough to have full privacy, and close enough to be like living together?” he guessed.

“I just wanted to make sure someone else as smart as I am would come to the same conclusion,” Tony said. “But yes.”

Bruce didn’t really think that him also coming up with an idea meant that it was a good one. In fact, he was inclined to take that as a bad sign. But he didn’t say anything to imply that. “That’s going to be quite the lifestyle change.”

“That is indeed one of the many problems with this plan,” Tony agreed. “I can’t really build something like this just anywhere, and definitely nowhere quiet and small. Buildings as tall as what I’m going for are only acceptable in downtown areas, here or in any other city. I guess I could have one to three levels with separate wings if we went to a more country kind of location, or even back to Malibu, though I don’t necessarily like to think about Malibu too much. But I’m not going to move to Wyoming, or something. Too Brokeback Mountain.”

“Seriously? Brokeback Mountain is the first thing you think of when you think of Wyoming?”

“It was an award-winning film!”

Bruce rolled his eyes. “The fact that you’re bringing up Malibu kind of makes me think that’s exactly what you want, except the fact that we were talking about downtown areas makes me think you’re thinking Manhattan again--I highly doubt you mean downtown LA or Chicago.”

Tony shrugged, which meant yes, that’s an accurate assessment, but don’t get a big head about it.

Bruce was afraid to ask, but. “The fact that these are places you’ve already lived… Are you intentionally clinging to your past, or so afraid that that’s what’s happening that you’re trying to get me to talk you out of it?”

“I get it, you’ve been living a life of new age talk therapy and meditation and introspection. I’ve lived a life of whiskey, so I don’t know the answer to that question.”

Bruce felt guilty for smiling at that. “There are plenty of other places rich people like to live in America, or outside of America.” He came back to the kitchen table with two mugs of herbal tea, lightly sweetened, and watched Tony put a small splash of whiskey in his, and take a sip. Bruce wasn’t one to judge unless someone seemed to have a significant problem--even then he wasn’t the type to judge, or push, just to help. Tony didn’t even seem there yet; Bruce just worried.

“Why do you assume I’m going to pick somewhere rich people live?”

“First of all, anywhere you pick will become a place where rich people live, at least two of them if you convince Pepper to live with you, three if you count Morgan.”

“Four if I get you to join,” Tony said.

Bruce coughed. “... We’re coming back to that later; you want me to live with you?”

“That’s not really coming back to it later. I bet we still have some bad scientific inventions left in us to work through together, and I know you liked living near a lab and all my tech. And food.”

“Yeah, of course I did, Tony, but you’re talking about building a place that your ex-wife and daughter can live in with you but not _with you_ with you, and you want to add me into that mix? And you, at our age, think we should just live up the roommate lifestyle?”

“Because the rest of our lives have been so traditional? I mean, yes, OK, besides the part where I was living with my wife and daughter happily by the lake, which feels like it was recent for me, but wasn’t for them, and is fucking me up a bit. Besides that part I haven’t done anything normal in my life.”

Bruce leaned forward. “I had some normality here and there, but mostly I have to say I feel the same. That doesn’t mean this is a good idea.”

“But it does mean you’ll do it. Great! You can sell this place or stop renting it or whatever, or you can keep it as a good hiding place. Well, not so much hiding from me, since I know where it is, but I’d respect your privacy. Once I’m not staying here, that is, and once I stop the renovations on the house by Pepper and start building a new Stark/Avengers Tower.”

“Are you sure you shouldn’t lay low? There aren’t any invasion level threats in the world that we know of, but Loki’s on the loose, and also you could be at risk from just regular people who don’t like you.” Bruce looked legitimately worried. Tony was too; bringing himself closer to his family and in the spotlight again was bringing his family closer to danger in a way he wasn’t sure he was comfortable with. In a busy city they couldn’t hide where they were living forever.

“So, Malibu?” Tony asked. “Pepper always liked it, so we can check if she still does. Gotta say it’s going to suck to leave the other kid behind..”

It took Bruce a second to catch his meaning. “Peter was going to leave you in a bit to go back to school anyway.”

“That’s a little different, but yeah, I know. Come help me look for houses or cliff sides or plots of land.” Tony was already pulling them up on the tablet, though Bruce was pretty sure that things like that weren’t easy to find with a quick search.

“Tomorrow,” Bruce said, nudging Tony to stand up until he got with the program. “Go to sleep.”

It still took him a while to fall asleep, but he slept for a few hours straight.

\---

“It’s equally important that this place we design has separation and privacy to make sure we’re giving Pepper what she wants, and to make sure that Morgan can freely see both of her parents whenever she wants to,” was how Tony started conversation over coffee in the morning.

“I’m guessing you have an architect for this,” Bruce said, walking to the refrigerator, still in his pajamas. He didn’t even bother commenting on the lack of pleasantries. 

“Several. Who, like everything else, think that I’m dead, though I guess this coming out was bound to happen anyway.”

“Do we really need to take ‘coming out’ from the LGBTQIA+ community?” Bruce asked, dumping granola into his yogurt.

“Wow, you really did get with the times. Besides, aren’t you and I both the B in the community?”

Bruce didn’t even bother asking how Tony knew that about him, if he’d figured it out just from observation or if he’d come across digital proof at some point. “Sure, fine, come out as alive, just know it’s not what the A stands for.”

Tony laughed. “Once people know I’m alive, the place will also have to be incredibly well-protected, and far enough away from anywhere else to notice if someone’s coming for us. But I guess that would have been needed anyway.”

“Not until your formal announcement. Are we waiting for SHIELD?” Bruce felt awkward, suddenly. What’d he mean, we? Wouldn’t it just be Tony, maybe with Pepper?

Tony scoffed. “If they stick to my schedule, maybe. I’m leaving in twenty minutes--you want to come with?”

“Won’t that be awkward?”

“For you, probably, but it’d make me feel better,” Tony said.

Bruce rolled his eyes, but got up to go get ready. “You’re lucky I’m a person with no fixed commitments, who has known you for a long time and is therefore willing to put up with your whims.”

“Yes, I am.”

\---

“You want me to move to Malibu?” Pepper asked. Loudly.

“I want to know if you would want to move to Malibu,” Tony corrected. “Because I can’t live apart from my daughter or share custody but I don’t want to fight with you.”

“And Bruce is here because…”

“Well, he’s coming too.”

Pepper threw her hands up. “Oh, of course he is! Sorry, Bruce, that was rude. I just don’t like to feel like all of this was decided without me.”

“I am legitimately asking you,” Tony insisted. “Well, I’m legitimately asking you about the location. The giant multi-family living experience part is the non-negotiable part, or at least the part that’s important to me. I can’t live without my daughter and I don’t think that you want her to live without me, so isn’t this the best choice?”

Pepper pursed her lips and crossed her arms. “Yes,” she said, after a lot of thought. “But I want to stay in New York.”

“Bruce and I kind of thought that would be more difficult to be safe in Manhattan, and that anywhere else would be a weird place to have a huge multi-family sprawling dealio?”

“I think you’re forgetting about a lot of different parts of New York that aren’t Manhattan, and have plenty of land. And plenty of places for spoiled rich people, if that’s what you’re into,” Pepper added, teasing.

“Why does everyone think that?” Tony asked, looking at the ceiling for answers. “I just need a lot of space, that’s close enough to somewhere I can have important meetings and conferences, and a lot of good stores and restaurants--OK, I see it. I see it now.”

“What if you buy back the Avengers Tower?” Bruce asked.

Tony turned on him. “And put Pepper and Morgan in danger? Put a target on our backs?”

Bruce was already shaking his head, anticipating this question. “No, spread out the target on the back of the Avengers, to this and the facility. And then you buy another building for yourself. You could still use the Avengers Tower--The Avengers could still use it. I know it makes a little less sense since we should probably be spreading out across the country with multiple headquarters, but…”

“I like it,” Pepper said. “It puts a risk on anyone in the Avengers Tower, though.”

“No more than there was before, or at the other complex. Especially if our threats are alien or otherwise ridiculous, and those are the main ones we risk anyway. We have security for all the normal ones.” Tony’s expression had brightened considerably, and Bruce suspected that maybe he also had wanted to be in New York.

“Are you going to be able to afford this?” Bruce joked.

\---

Tony’s so-called coming out and repurchase of Avengers Tower stirred up enough publicity for him to properly hide the fact that he was also buying another building, a residential one with good security and good ways to enter without being seen by anyone on the street. But of course, Tony was more than capable of successfully outfitting it with the correct increased security to prevent intruders, as long as he and Bruce didn’t get too ambitious with their experimentation.

There were several floors between Tony’s and Pepper’s, for her privacy--even though Tony could have and would have sound-proofed them well. For his own peace of mind, in case Pepper--or when Pepper started seeing someone else. Or maybe his own privacy, if he decided to have a rebound parade. 

Because of this, Bruce’s place was closer to Tony’s than Pepper’s was, but Tony had given him a lower floor just in case of damages--which he insisted he didn’t expect, included a few floors for guests, though if the Avengers were in town they could stay at that tower instead. Tony called it the Hulk’s floor even though Bruce spent more time human-sized, and even though he knew that anybody who was privy to this information might think that it was weird that there were a bunch of guest floors, a separated and/or widowed married couple, and a Hulk.

Tony also thought it was weird, but he’d always liked that sort of thing, doing what worked best for him without adhering to norms, unless those happened to be what he wanted at the time.

There were multiple floors of labs, as well. Morgan’s access to those was firmly denied, but her ability to talk to Tony over FRIDAY was unlimited unless Tony very specifically requested something different.

She had unlimited access to Tony’s floor, as well, under the same conditions. Tony hoped he was careful enough to request these things when he needed them.

Bruce had access to all labs but one, since Tony knew himself and that he’d probably at some point decide that he needed full isolation, and he may as well prepare for that instead of fighting his own personality. 

That was the same reason he didn’t allow himself access to Pepper’s floor without her express permission. He had let her pick a password to set the rule. He knew that she didn’t believe that he had set it up to be unhackable by himself, and that was… probably true. He wasn’t sure where he landed on the philosophical debate on whether or not he could build a security system he couldn’t hack, much less the practical side. But he’d try not to do that, anyway. 

Each floor also had more than enough room for extra bedrooms, not that Tony thought that everyone would be having a ton of guests, but he wasn’t an inconsiderate unpaid landlord. (Pepper, who had enough money to pay the going rate of rent, had offered. Bruce had as well, though he couldn’t really afford it.)

Tony’s floor had a bedroom for Morgan, of course, and truly looked like the apartment of a dad instead of a bachelor, with toys everywhere instead of booze, for example. In fact, there weren’t any dangerous things where someone could get to them. Those were all in the labs, and all the tech would recognize Morgan to make sure that nothing was unsafe from a content perspective. He refused to invade her privacy, trusting instead that the monitoring software would handle it. At least in the future, when Morgan had more interest in things that might be risky online. He told Pepper that she could check the history if she wanted, though.

When Tony couldn’t be with Morgan, which he truly did like it was his full time job, he would be in the labs, sometimes alone, sometimes with Bruce, and often visited by Peter, when he could find the time in his busy college student life to come home and visit his aunt, and then carve a little time out of that to visit the Avengers. He had pretty good access in Tony’s home, as well. Bruce liked to tease Tony about that, about him going soft, and Tony pretty much just accepted it, that this was his new reality.

Tony, Bruce, and Peter were in one of the labs, just messing around with coming up with ideas that could help their Avengers endeavors. Even though none of them were doing anything as intensive as they’d done before, thankfully.

They were also having more fun than maybe they needed to, creating ridiculous gadgets that worked, but wouldn’t necessarily help anyone. At the moment, they were fighting each other with three guns that, if aimed correctly, would wrap a bracelet around the wrist of the person you aimed at. 

“This might be the dumbest thing we’ve ever made,” Bruce pointed out, wearing seven bracelets between both wrists.

“If we’d made it for handcuffs it’d be good for criminals,” Peter said.

“Or for fun,” Tony added. “We should do that next.”

“I’m going to hope you meant ‘make a handcuff gun’ there, and not handcuff each other,” Bruce said. He unfastened his jewelry, noticing that Tony and Peter only had two each. “Why did we even make these?”

“Tony was talking about how hard it used to be for him to convince Miss Potts to accept gifts,” Peter said. Bruce winced on Tony’s behalf at the reminder of his single status with Pepper’s last name, but Tony’s face remained unchanged. 

So Bruce skipped over commenting on it, not wanting to draw attention. “That’s a pretty extreme way to handle this problem, though.”

Tony snorted. “Since you’ve made peace with your other half, I can make these kind of jokes, such as pointing out the fact that you are the epitome of extreme scientific decisions.”

Bruce’s eyes widened, but he was fighting a laugh. “OK, and you’re one to talk?”

Peter was openly laughing at both of them. “I’m pretty sure neither of you can make that argument, although to be fair, neither can I. I mean, not all of this is my fault, but not all if it was your fault, either, and we really were just trying to figure out the best way to handle our situations and use them for good.”

“I mean, that’s all true, but it’s less funny.” Tony put the guns in the “maybe redesign later” bin. 

“Oh, I have to catch my bus!” Peter said. “Bye Bruce! Bye Tony!” He waved, as though they weren’t in the same room, gathering up his belongings and running out of the room to the elevator.

Designing ridiculous tech as two older men with no young person as an excuse always felt awkward, pressuring them to be serious when Peter left. The current real project was a communications upgrade, and neither of them were feeling particularly inspired, though Peter being there tended to put both of them in good moods.

“I think you’re taking my breakup with Pepper harder than I am,” Tony said, just when Bruce thought that they were going to maybe end their night here, and go their separate ways. Maybe that they would leave it on the somewhat cheerful note left by Peter’s presence. Instead, Tony was pulling out some particularly expensive looking scotch and pouring two glasses. Bruce was a little afraid of his own potential for substance abuse, all things considered; knowing that calming down his body to avoid anger was a tempting but ultimately senseless desire. 

But drinking a little didn’t tend to cause him any problems, so he accepted the glass. “I think that my anticipation of _you_ taking it badly is worse than how you’re actually taking it,” he admitted.

“I appreciate your concern. No, really, I know that sounded sarcastic; I meant it. But one of the differences between me and Pepper is that… to me, there’s no difference between being with someone and being friends with someone. No, wait, I mean there are a lot of differences, but the _feelings_ aren’t any different. I don’t feel any differently about Pepper when we’re not together. And even though I respect her decision to be apart, I don’t think that she feels differently about me. Do you really think if we’re not married or dating she’d be less sad if I died?”

Bruce hadn’t known that Tony had been thinking about it to this extent, and it hit him pretty hard to think of just how generous he was being, emotionally. “Maybe it won’t be better, but it makes her feel like it’ll be better? No, that’s definitely me being patronizing. I can’t know how other people feel just because I agree with you, Tony. Maybe she’s right and a little bit of distance can make it hurt less. Not having that person by your side every day to get used to their presence, knowing that they’re not your partner in life… Wow and I am not helping you feel better at all.”

Tony sipped his drink. “If I were really not OK with this, you’d be sending me right over the edge, yeah. Don’t worry about it, though. Being friends with Pepper and living with my daughter is more than enough. I’ve accepted not being with her a thousand times before this, and I’m always willing to do it again. And she’s _alive_ and well. Sure I’m going to drink a bit more, go out, do the usual getting over someone stuff again. But what I do have is amazing.”

Bruce stared at him, not like he was crazy but the same way he had when Tony was first back, like he was so astonished to see him there, and so afraid that he was going to leave again.

“I’m hesitant to believe you feel that way, because if you do, that’d be too mature for anybody, not just you.”

“Oh, thanks, good to know what you think of me,” Tony joked. “And stop staring. I’m not going anywhere.”

Bruce flinched, called out. He looked away, but had to look back because, well, it was a conversation, and where else was he supposed to look? “I’m going to choose to believe you, and also to keep an eye on you. Totally separate things.”

“Uh-huh.” Tony finished his drink, reached over, and drained Bruce’s, too. “You can have the guest room if you can’t make it all the way down one floor.”

Something about the way he said it sounded insincere, like a hint, like Tony didn’t want to be alone. Or Bruce was projecting completely; that was just as likely. Tony had walked off, wouldn’t know until morning what Bruce decided unless he checked, but Bruce still went to the guest room, just in case.

\---

The Avengers, old and new, were having a reunion-slash-party-slash-meeting at the Tower, and nearly everyone but Thor and Strange had shown up. Surprising everyone including Tony, Bruce confessed that he had talked to Thor, and knew where he was, why he wasn’t coming, and that they shouldn’t worry about Loki. When pressed by Steve, he asked if they could just use the trust that he’d earned to believe him on this issue, the same way Bruce was trusting Thor.

They’d hashed everything out in the meeting: that Clint, Tony, Bruce, and Thor were all semi-retired at this point, as was Scott. Peter Quill and company, and Carol were still away, making up a sort of strange, unbalanced space contingent. Bucky, Sam, and Rhodey were all willing to go out much more often than Steve or Tony, and Peter Parker mostly stayed around his college town, but did as much as he could. Wanda was still happy to go out there, to have something to do. T’Challa and the Wakanda contingent were pretty busy managing a whole country, but they offered a lot of support. Valkyrie was also busy in the same way, but came to the meeting as the Asgardian representative. Steve called himself _very_ part-time, and Bruce and Tony considered themselves consultants, though they got the itch every once in a while. Natasha was newly in charge, coordinating and strategizing.

“You shouldn’t waste that trust argument on someone else,” Tony told Bruce, later. “You never know when you’re going to need it for yourself.”

“Well, maybe someone else will pay it forward,” Bruce answered, optimistically. “I mean, not Thor, because that argument used up more of his goodwill than it did mine, but still.”

“I might have some left.”

Bruce laughed. “You did-and-didn’t die for the world, Tony, I don’t think yours will ever run out. Maybe if you turn evil and destructive, but maybe not even then. Honestly, I’d probably still be on your side in that case.”

Tony, weirdly, believed him, and it hit him harder than he expected. He and Bruce were generally on the same page, with an automatic support for each other that started pretty soon after they met, developed naturally. But Bruce was laying it out in the open, making promises.

He’d meant it when he told Bruce that friendships and relationships could be just as meaningful to him, but he didn’t know exactly how to tell him how important their friendship had been to him, and continued to be. Hell, they were living in the same building and working together all the time just because they both recognized that it was what they wanted to do. That was beyond a traditional friendship, anyway.

“OK, now you’re the one who’s staring,” Bruce accused him, snapping Tony out of his thoughts. He hadn’t realized was staring the whole time, until he was called out on it and he had to admit it. Hopefully the thoughts weren’t plastered across his face, although Bruce tended to be able to read him. 

He must have been drunker than he realized, because instead of closing off he said, “I’m glad you’re here.” He didn’t mean here at this specific meeting/party, but Bruce probably figured that out.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Bruce said, emphatically, and Tony remembered again that he was the one they feared _wouldn’t_ be here, the one who shouldn’t be, who is so, so lucky to be there. It hit him in a tired, relieved way that made his knees weak, and he leaned against the wall and closer to Bruce in the process. He’d been feeling this a lot lately, a desire to be closer to Bruce, when they were in the lab, when they were at his place after a long day in the lab or out in the field. It wasn’t an overtly sexual or romantic desire, but he was able to recognize it as not strictly platonic, either. It was mostly a “maybe,” or an “I wonder.” The problem with that was that he was definitely still in rebound territory, timing-wise, and if Bruce _was_ the type to be uncomfortable if turning a friendship into something else didn’t work out, that wouldn’t be worth it. Tony knew that Bruce had insisted that he wasn’t, but he was lucky enough that Pepper had been able to still be around him after the breakup. He didn’t know if he wanted to risk this with another friend in case Bruce was wrong about himself, and couldn’t take it.

Well, that was why he was avoiding being the one to initiate anything. If Bruce made a move on him, Tony would believe him, so he just had to be very clearly open to it. Well, even that felt a little manipulative and dishonest. Tony made a mental note to put a real note in his to do list to bring this up if he still had these feelings for Bruce in a month.

“Yeah, I’m glad we’re both here. I mean that in the ‘alive’ sense, not the ‘at this party’ sense, because I’m really thinking we should leave; I’m feeling pretty inspired.”

“You want to go work in the labs?” Bruce clarified, looking a little like he’d just received a gift, like there was nothing else he’d rather do.

That was indeed exactly what Tony wanted, but he was glad Bruce was just as excited, as they said some quick goodbyes to those who were still around, heading to the garage to get into Tony’s car. Tony driving one of his favorite cars with Bruce in the passenger seat, looking relaxed, the same way he had even at the beginning where they hadn’t known each other for that long and he’d been snatched out of Kolkata. Tony had to force his eyes to stay on the road.

Back at the labs, Tony wanted them to be selfish, and only work on their own projects. The Hulk didn’t really _need_ anything, but Tony tended to prefer he be a little more protected and safe, especially now that Bruce kept all of his memories and felt all the pain, to the extent that he could through the Hulk body.

Bruce on the other hand, was especially concerned with the biological impacts of Tony’s suit, trying to minimize the effect of any damage to the suit reaching the person wearing it. Tony draped an arm across Bruce’s shoulders, leaning into him fairly heavily. Bruce didn’t startle or question it, but this could have just as easily been a platonic gesture between people who had slightly more physical personalities. Tony knew that he was being unfair by intentionally straddling the line of plausible deniability for his own benefit. 

Except that Bruce put an arm around his waist in return, kept them close as he used his other hand to continue with the small alterations he was making to a possible next version of the suit. Tony still had his own models, untouched with no outside input, but allowing someone to even see the in-depth plans, to try out new things, was pretty huge for him.

He was thinking, again, maybe. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

\---

Maybe turned to definitely before Tony’s one month guideline, and Tony didn’t know how he was going to wait another week to make a move or have a conversation. Honestly, he thought he might not, after he got home one day to find Bruce and Peter in the lab without him.

Peter still didn’t have access to the Iron Man suit plans, not because he was untrustworthy but because he was young, so they weren’t working on that. Actually, they weren’t working on anything. The screens had gone to sleep from disuse, and they were sitting on an empty lab bench, and Peter was talking, and Bruce was listening so intently and seriously. That was the first thing that was noteworthy; Peter talked a mile a minute and most people didn’t or couldn’t listen to everything he said. Tony did, but he pretended he didn’t, just to be annoying. If he’d thought about it, of course he would have known Bruce would have been the full attention type, but for some reason, he hadn’t connected the dots.

Tony watched this for a moment before he walked in, which seemed to be around the time that it was Bruce’s turn to talk. “I wouldn’t necessarily listen to my advice except on what not to do, to be honest. I made a lot of mistakes with school, friends, significant others, and obviously work. It’s kind of a miracle I ended up here. A miracle and a lot of help. You have the help, but let’s not count on more miracles; it’s not very scientific.” 

Peter was laughing, but he still argued. “I mean, from what I’ve heard from other people, you were trying to do as much good as you can, and doing a pretty good job. I don’t think you should put yourself down. Not that people need to do constant volunteer work to be good people! But, you did, and I think that it was good…”

“He gets it,” Tony said, but he couldn’t completely hide his smile at them. Both Peter and Bruce turned to him immediately, looking pretty glad to see him, despite the interruption.

“We’re talking work-life balance,” Bruce explained, even though Tony didn’t ask. “Years ago I would have said that you can’t comment on that, but your priorities have changed pretty hugely.”

“My priorities are always changing hugely,” Tony corrected, too honest. “Go with the flow, do what really matters to you and makes you feel better. Just remember if you only have one priority, you’re probably not doing it right.”

Tony didn’t feel like he was doing anything special, but Bruce was giving him that look again.

“That’s really helpful! I’ve got to get going, but I’ll keep that in mind. Thanks for listening too, Dr. Banner! I’m sorry that means we got almost no work done today.”

“It’s fine, Peter. We don’t have to work all the time. In fact maybe next time we’ll just get lunch or something, away from the lab. To remind ourselves that life isn’t all about work, yeah?”

“Sounds great! Bye!”

He left pretty quickly, the way he always seemed to, always in a hurry.

“That was cute,” Tony said, when he honestly may still have been in earshot, not that it mattered.

“I’m going to tell Peter you called him cute, at his age.”

“I meant you,” Tony replied. Bruce scoffed, and Tony didn’t push it.

“I think I’m equal parts jealous of and worried for him,” Bruce confessed. “Jealous that he has people guiding him while he’s starting out--though worried that those people are us--and then worried that starting this young will skew his worldview, even worse than ours. But he keeps proving me wrong, and doing great, being worried about everyone else and trying to do his best. And then he acts like he’s bothering me, like he could.” Bruce rolled his eyes at that thought. Tony agreed that it was a ridiculous thought, and hoped he was right that Peter knew Tony was kidding acting like he was ever seriously annoyed with him.

He was pretty sure he did, or he wouldn’t keep coming back to visit.

“He’s been through a lot,” Tony said, sort of a non sequitur. “More than I had at that age, and handled it better than I could have. Honestly, I think it’s him; I think that he could be in all of these ridiculous situations and still be amazing. Not that we shouldn’t still try to help him when possible.”

“Yeah,” Bruce agreed. “That’s what I was trying and failing to say. Thanks.”

“You don’t have to thank me for understanding your points.”

“Can I thank you for giving me a place to live by my closest friend, and to do ridiculous lab experiments whenever I want?” Bruce teased.

“Definitely not. I assure you, that was purely selfish.”

“I’m, um. Not to be overly sentimental, but I’m glad that working with me is something you consider to be your selfish choice.”

“Uh-oh,” Tony interrupted. “Tell me now if this is going to become an emotional conversation best enjoyed over drinks. But also yes, obviously, I’m glad you moved in.”

“Maybe just one drink,” Bruce conceded.

“OK, got it, that kind of conversation. Let’s go.” Tony grabbed Bruce by the wrist to encourage leaving, going to the elevator and to Tony’s floor, and each having a drink before they sat next to each other on the couch.

“I know you’re mostly kidding, and who am I to tell anyone how much to drink, but I do want you to hear this part before drink number three, at least, if you were heading there.”

“I wasn’t, unless you’re taking me there,” Tony answered, honestly. 

“Hopefully not.” Bruce stretched his arms over his head, getting comfortable and settling in. Tony had actually had a pretty good day, spending most of it with Morgan and coming home to see his favorite lab partners. Ever since being a little more content with his situation, only rough days or parties were for two or more drinks. 

It was unlikely that Bruce was about to cause either of those situations.

He put his drink down, took Tony’s from his hand and set it on the table, too. Tony didn’t fight it, out of curiosity as much as anything else. “Please tell me I haven’t been reading this wrong,” he said, before kissing Tony softly for a moment, hand on his face. Tony leaned into it, keeping the kiss slow and soft, though he deepened it a little toward the end, felt his stomach flip when Bruce responded. 

“So, not wrong?” Bruce asked, breathing faster than he should have been after just one kiss. 

“You were really worried about that?” Tony asked, then felt guilty for the tease almost immediately, and overcorrected. “You’re right that this is what I wanted. Or at least a start.” He grinned, suggestively. Since Bruce’s hand was still on his face, it was hard to resist the urge to lean in again, so he didn’t. Bruce responded like he was waiting for it, moved like he was about to adjust their position in a way that might be more enjoyable and comfortable, but then he pulled back, and Tony groaned. It looked like he was in awe, like he was having as much trouble as Tony pulling away.

“This is the part with the conversation that you might or might not want a drink for,” Bruce said, confirming Tony’s worry.

“A good old fashioned define the relationship?”

Bruce smiled at him, licked his lips nervously. “I’m not… wow, there is no good way to say any of this. The main point is… whatever we decide, it won’t change things between us. I mean, it will, but it won’t--”

“Won’t ruin our friendship?” Tony suggested.

“That’s what I was going to say, but it sounded both dramatic and insufficient to describe our relationship at the same time. The point is… we could stop now, we could have a one-night thing, friends with benefits, or…”

“Or?” Tony asked, voice low.

“Or,” Bruce said, his heart beating quickly, “I guess that’s where the trouble starts, with or. Because I believe you about Pepper, truly. But if she changed her mind, I don’t think you’d turn her down. That’s why I’m a little afraid to ask for anything more serious. I would be fine with something open, if you were interested, but I know that wouldn’t stop you from ending things if Pepper wanted you back. And I don’t blame you for that.”

Tony was thrilled, and sure that it was showing on his face. “You are even more open-minded than expected, and you _really_ like me.”

“Well, yeah.”

Now there’s the romantic confession Tony was--OK, he wasn’t hoping for a dramatic declaration; this was exactly what he wanted.

“You’re probably right about some of that. But I think you’re underestimating a few key things. Pepper’s determination, for one. She wouldn’t have split up like this if she didn’t mean it. How much _I_ like _you_ , then, is the next thing you’re underestimating, that if we started something I would ever dump you. And, the third thing would be… how much I know, deep down, that Pepper is right. Look, I _am_ Iron Man; I don’t just wear the suit. Any time something like this happens again, I’ll be out there. Pepper put on a suit to save the world, but that’s not who she is. And it’s not who she wants, and I can’t be with someone who wants me to be something else, who needs promises that I can’t make.”

Bruce’s eyes widened. “I kind of thought you would want her forever. I’ll believe you, though. And given your little ‘you miscalculated’ speech, I’m guessing you have a choice in mind?”

“Here’s my proposal. Serious relationship. Not open unless you want that, for your own peace of mind.”

Bruce breathed in shakily. “That’s exactly what I want. But if. If Pepper wants something exclusive, I’m terrified you’d pick her still. I know I’m your second choice.”

“Chronologically, maybe,” Tony said. “You’re underestimating your importance again. And you’re forgetting that to me, being friends with Pepper is more than enough. You’re here. You want to be with me, the real me, all of me, and I want to be with you. I’m not going to give that up no matter who’s asking.”

And Bruce believed him, all at once. Couldn’t keep his hands off him after that, and did something that drove Tony immediately crazy when he leaned himself back and pulled Tony on top of him. Tony had to kiss him to pay him back for that, deeply and slowly, like they had all the time in the world. He tested his limits, too, putting more and more of his weight on Bruce who made no complaints, just a satisfied noise that Tony felt, tasted. He moved his legs so Tony could be closer and ran his hands down his back.

Tony had to push himself back up onto his hands for air. “We should move this to my bedroom, not least because it’s amazing, and you haven’t even seen my bed yet.”

“It’s nice,” Bruce agreed after they got there, giving it a cursory glance, and then he stepped into Tony’s space, stepping him back enough that the logical option was for him to fall back onto the bed, but not pushing, just giving the option. Tony took it, and Bruce was on him immediately, pressing him down into the bed.

Tony looked up at him. “I have to say, this general switch behavior is a really good sign for the future.”

  
Bruce laughed, kissing his neck, and already going for his pants, which Tony whispered was another good sign.He gasped at the feeling of a finger lightly brushing against his stomach. “Oh, Tony, there is so much I want to learn about you.”

“A scientific approach,” Tony said, a little strained. “Another good sign.”

\---

Tony was right, of course. Pepper did not come “crawling back” or any other terrible expressions to indicate that she had changed her mind. What she did instead, was tease them relentlessly over breakfast, and lean in to whisper in Bruce’s ear how interesting it was that they both had the same type.

Tony just laughed as Bruce stared at him. “And you thought that I could ever tell Pepper what to do, or that she was the type to go back on her word, or make decisions lightly.”

“I did not think any of those things. Please don’t tell me that you told Pepper any of those things.”

“Of course not, she likes you, and I’d hate to ruin that.”

Bruce snorted. “Yeah, don’t get between me and Pepper, that’s the concern.”

Tony closed his eyes. “Between, you say? Hold on, I’m having a fantasy. Give me a minute.”

“Feel free to share with the class,” Bruce answered, leaning back in his chair. “I can’t even feel guilty anymore. But… are you sure this doesn’t mean she’s interested?” 

“This might sound fucked up, but honestly I just think it means she’s comfortable with this. With me and you being together, and with me and her not being together. Otherwise she’d never tease us. Trust me, if she were interested in joining--or splitting us up, which you really need to stop being afraid of--she’d be upfront about it. Pepper is great, not the type to tease her way into something.”

“Yeah, I know,” Bruce groaned. “Of course you’re right. But you guys are amazing. You can see why I’m worried.”

Tony stood up and turned Bruce’s chair around, so he could lean in and get right in his face, hands on the sides of Bruce’s neck. “You and I are amazing. I love you and I want to be with you, and I honestly don’t want to be with Pepper anymore, OK? Full closed status on our relationship. Again, unless you want something different. But no more open out of fear stuff here. I’m only interested in you, now.” Then he sat on Bruce’s lap and kissed him for several minutes before they could separate enough for it to be Bruce’s turn to talk, which was hard for him to do with Tony’s face in his neck, keeping him sufficiently distracted. 

“You don’t have to say that, Tony.”

“I know I don’t.” Tony didn’t move to talk, kept his head down. It felt so, so intimate, and Bruce knew it was sad they’d been dating for a while and he still wasn’t used to the little gestures, their comfort and casual moments. “And I don’t mean anything bad about Pepper, who is always amazing, just that I realized the same thing that she did, that our lives aren’t compatible, and we’re moving farther away from that every day, and it’s OK. Believe me.”

“OK. Tony, I’m sorry, I believe you. I love you too and I believe you.” He nudged Tony’s face with his own until they could look at each other, so that Tony could see it in his eyes, and then he couldn’t help but kiss him, aiming for soft and hitting a little more desperate, feeling clingy, but Tony responded in kind, like a reassurance. 

\---

Tony and Bruce also still worked really well together. In the lab, they didn’t fight any more than they did before, and they kept up their general habits of trying to design things to protect the other person, and Peter. They did tease each other differently, flirting, and then Peter caught on and teased them about that.

After a while, Tony took another step on the commitment front and redesigned their two floors to have the living area just be ultra high ceiling and include a more open staircase to the second floor of bedrooms, and a loft area. 

As though he were trying to prove his seriousness to Bruce, he announced their relationship to all the Avengers, old and new, who didn’t know yet. He made it obvious in public, which Bruce noticed and kind of leaned into, enjoying it. He was famous in his own right, making it even bigger news. Tony made a point to mention his very amicable split with Pepper, how he sees his daughter plenty, thank you very much, but of course people were going to speculate. 

Bruce had truly believed Tony when he said that he was committed to him, and all of this was unnecessary, but pretty fun. For everything that they did that indicated that their relationship was serious and long-term, they did just as much that demonstrated that it was always going to be playful and ridiculous. Playing around with paparazzi, making the Avengers feel awkward at meetings--sometimes intentionally, sometimes totally by accident--jokingly coparanting Peter, and when they were alone, still messing around and making fun of each other.

Being in the field together was different enough that Bruce got a brief fear that they would have similar problems to Pepper and Tony, in that they couldn’t handle each other going out and risking their lives, but Bruce quickly realized that it was the same as it would have been if they weren’t together. Honestly, he had prioritized Tony the whole time, been scared for him always, and he was willing to bear this, even glad to. Happy to be the one saving him, worrying for him, and going home with him, terrified for and proud of him in equal measures.

Tony, of course, felt much the same, still more afraid for the Hulk than other people tended to be, but proud, more so after he’d heard Bruce’s full story directly from him.

He asked Bruce how he was able to turn into the Hulk, now that he’s not as angry anymore. Bruce said that there would always be something to be angry about, if his anger about his past ran out. But he refused to say what it was. Tony just tried to emphasized, said that his priorities, his emotions had also shifted.

All of that really came to a head on the day that they had conclusively proven that it made sense for the Tesseract to latch onto Loki’s magic and wormhole him to a timeline already significantly affected by time travel, and for it to have thrown them off in their return trip to the extent that it did. Peter was there, after Tony and Bruce had decided that it would be all right, to allow him that once in a lifetime chance.

After it was there, floating in the air between them, their proof, something shattered in them. They had nothing left to investigate about their return trip, about the Stones. They couldn’t time travel anymore, unless they wanted to start a huge fight. Their physical, researchable ties to what had happened were gone now, the chapter completed.

Bruce had to sit down. Tony sat next to him, and leaned into him; Peter stood across from them, his back against the lab table.

When he could tell that nobody else could, Peter spoke. “I think it’d be really bad if we had the other Stones. It’s pretty cool that you guys are able to figure out how they work this much, but I think it’d be really bad if you ever thought you had a reason to try to replicate them. Especially since both of you were totally willing to risk death to use them, which is like, so scary and amazing and you guys are the best and you terrify me. But I don’t… need to understand the power that turned half the population, including _me_ into dust, the power that killed you, Tony, and hurt Bruce more than anything has managed to do since he became the Hulk. It’s too much.”

Tony sighed; Bruce felt it on his neck. “You’re right, of course. I just always want a contingency plan. After our armor around the Earth plan didn’t pan out.”

“Your plan,” Bruce corrected, automatically, then he felt immediately guilty. He continued, quieter, “I wanted to know, specifically, why it didn’t kill me, when it killed Tony. Who else could have handled it, and how many other people could have handled it, people he should have _waited for_ \--” and then he got too choked up and angry to speak.

Tony’s hand was tightly gripping his knee, and Bruce moved his on top of Tony’s just to feel him there. “Bruce, I’m sorry, but I had to. I didn’t want to risk waiting another second--or at least that’s what I would have thought, if I’d been able to actually do what I was planning on before Steve showed up. What did happen, but not to me.”

“You might not have even been in that situation if I hadn’t been gone for five years,” Peter started. “Maybe I could have helped, or maybe you wouldn’t have decided to fight if I weren’t gone.”

“No,” Tony and Bruce said at the same time. Then Tony continued, “I will never regret getting you back. I wouldn’t even if I had died. And that’s not your fault.”

“Then it’s definitely not yours,” Peter insisted. “Either of yours.” He threw his arms around both of them, but mostly so they couldn’t see him crying. 

“Sheesh,” Bruce said. “What’s with this new-age, emotional bullshit?”

**Author's Note:**

> My biggest goal when writing this was to take as much from canon as I possibly could, and then change it. That’s why I had them thrown off by two years, so that the deaths were still able to have an impact. This is just the only way that I feel personally satisfied when I write a fix-it. But then, I did want to also make this Bruce/Tony, which definitely doesn’t align with that. Of course, this is my selfish fix-it and everyone can have their own! Hopefully the twelve or so remaining people who also like Stanner will enjoy.
> 
> I didn’t want to say anything shitty about Thor’s weight, first off. Hopefully in calling him muscular I didn’t imply that he’d spontaneously gone back to the old body, as though there’s anything better about it.
> 
> For Clint, I pretty much imagined he’d be dedicated to his family almost exclusively at this point, and also tbh… I don’t understand his character so that worked with my writing.
> 
> I think the movie, while doing it in world’s shittiest way, was proving that Natasha really loved her team, and I wanted to show that in here. I may have been a little subtle, but I tried to make her the one who always wanted to be caring, but I didn’t want to neglect her skills, either. I see her as able to lead and make hard decisions, though she might have the same feeling I did after seeing the movie, which was clearly “nobody should die ever.”
> 
> Thor is left a mystery in case I come back to this later… but I wanted to remember that he and Bruce would be better friends after Ragnarok.
> 
> SPEAKING of Ragnarok, my least favorite thing about that movie AND Endgame was Bruce being the butt of every joke. However, since I was trying to stay true-ish to canon, I gave him a funny reason to have legitimate development. And then tried to explore the fact that he’d probably have new anger to draw on.
> 
> As for Tony, I wanted to keep his selflessness, as well as the “I am Iron Man” which, to me, meant an understanding that he would always be this person, the one willing to risk or sacrifice his life, to throw himself into the battle. I wanted him to accept that and not promise not to. 
> 
> Also I legitimately researched the concept of infinity for this, as if I’m smarter than Doctor Strange and will be able to successfully explain infinite parallel universes in his voice. Please remember I do applied statistics, not theoretical mathematics :D
> 
> Please review! Criticism is welcome, too. Any thoughts you may have.


End file.
